The traditionally tight-lipped Valve is planning for a big few days next week, when it will have not one, but three announcements. The first will come on Monday morning, and according to Valve, “The Steam Universe is Expanding in 2014.”
Valve’s co-founder and managing director Gabe Newell began the talk of a major, impending Valve announcement when he delivered the keynote speech at LinuxCon. He specifically mentioned hardware, leading many to believe that a Steam Box announcement was on the way.
“Next week we’re going to be rolling out more information about how we get there and what are the hardware opportunities we see for bringing Linux into the living room,” Newell said.
Even if that does turn out to be true and news of a Steam Box is imminent, the other two announcements are unknown.
“Last year, we shipped a software feature called Big Picture, a user-interface tailored for televisions and gamepads,” a launch page for the announcements reads “This year we’ve been working on even more ways to connect the dots for customers who want Steam in the living-room. Soon, we’ll be adding you to our design process, so that you can help us shape the future of Steam.”
There is a certain level of irony at work here in Valve teasing three announcements. For years now, fans have been waiting for news of Half-Life 3, leading to the meme/joke that Valve, and specifically Gabe Newell, doesn’t know how to count to three. Maybe Valve has a sense of humor after all.
