Valve is not short of competition in game development, publishing, or even providing digital distribution and DRM services of games made by various publishers, which went on to become an arm-shot for indie game developers. The next frontier for Valve backing up the potent open game distribution platform that Steam is, with a potent hardware platform, its very own gaming hardware platform.

The only difference here is that unlike Xbox, PlayStation or Wii, which are close-ended hardware platforms manufactured solely by the people behind them, that's Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, respectively, Valve's console will will be open-ended. The physical consoles will be made by various partners (just like NVIDIA GeForce is sold by various NVIDIA partners, such as EVGA, ASUS and ZOTAC). Valve will govern and mandate baseline hardware specifications, which partners have to meet, to ensure the platform delivers a consistent gaming experience to players.Here's the kicker. Steam Box is essentially an x86 machine that's designed well enough (in form and function) to compete with consoles. Its baseline specifications are not finalized, but it's rumored that Alienware X51 was designed anticipating those baseline specifications from Valve, with the intent that it could be retroactively upgradable to Valve's Steam Box platform firmware. This makes the Steam Box more like an open-platform evolution of the first-generation Xbox, which was x86 and PC GPU-powered. Further, the idea is to give this platform control consistency that consoles enjoy, which is, having a standard game controller. Valve filed a patent for such a controller, in 2011.

Steam Box will also revolutionize the way gamers experience games, not just with visual, aural, or rumble feedback, but realtime biometric feedback, which engages more human senses. "You won't ever look back," The Verge quoted its sources as saying, commenting on this feature. To experience realtime biometric feedback, sources postulate gamers as having to wear a device that resembles a bracelet, or integrated with the main controller. The platform will also tout Valve's Big Picture mode. "With big picture mode, gaming opportunities for Steam partners and customers become possible via PCs and Macs on any TV or computer display in the house," the company is quoted as saying.

To make Steam Box immune to naysayers and cynics screaming "vaporware" from rooftops, Valve is reportedly announcing this platform later this month, at GDC.