Steam Machines, Steam Link, and the Steam Controller Get Release Dates

Valve has had gamers on the edge of their seats since they announced their focus on the living room in 2014. Since then, they have been slowly giving out information on how and when they will fully realize a living room PC gaming experience. This week at computex, Valve finally finalized their plans and showed the final version of products that are coming this fall.

The first product that Valve has fully revealed is the Steam Controller. This is certainly not the first time we have seen the controller, but it is the first time we’ve seen this finalized version. The front of the controller slightly resembles an inverted Xbox controller. The major difference is that instead of having a right thumbstick and a directional-pad, Valve uses touchpads in their place. Additionally, the controller utilizes motion controls for an alternative form of control. The triggers are also rather unique, as they have both analog and digital input.

The two bigger products coming from Valve are the Steam Machines and Steam Link. The Steam Machines are equipped with SteamOS and are intended to be used in a living room environment. There are multiple vendors who are selling their machines at different prices. At the low end, Alienware is offering a Steam Machine with an i3 and proprietary 2GB NVIDIA GTX GPU. At the other end of the spectrum, the well regard boutique PC builders, Falcon Northwest, have a balls-to-the-wall $4999 machine. As a cheaper alternative, Valve is also selling the Steam Link. The Link isn’t very powerful and doesn't play games, but it allows gamers to stream games from their PC to their living room.

All of the aforementioned can currently be pre-ordered through Valve and various retailers. The first wave of pre-orders will be shipping on October 16th. For people who didn’t pre-order, all of these products will be hitting shelves on November 10th.

Source: AnandTech

Credit to Selena Gomez for bringing this to our attention