While the Steam gaming machines are still in development, Valve needs your help. As always, Valve believes that the best way to ensure the right products are getting made is to let people try them out and then make changes as they go. Valve have designed a high-performance prototype that’s optimized for gaming, for the living room, and for Steam. Of course, it’s also completely upgradable and open.
This year Valve will be shipping just 300 of these boxes to Steam users, free of charge, for testing. You can make yourself eligible to get one.
Want to make yourself eligible to participate in the beta? Add yourself to the list of candidates by completing the Eligibility Quest on Steam. Sound hard? It’s not.
Before October 25, log in to Steam and then visit your quest page to track your current status towards beta test eligibility
- Join the Steam Universe community group
- Agree to the Steam Hardware Beta Terms and Conditions
- Make 10 Steam friends (if you haven't already)
- Create a public Steam Community profile (if you haven't already)
- Play a game using a gamepad in Big Picture mode
You can complete the steps in any order. Once you’ve completed all of the steps, you’ll be awarded a special badge, and you’ll officially be among the pool of people from whom we’ll choose beta participants / hardware recipients.
On October 25th, the list will be locked. So complete the quest before then!
Your help is critical to our design process. Your feedback will shape both the new OS version of Steam and the new category of gaming machines that will run it.
A small number of users (30 or less) will be chosen based on their past community contributions and beta participation. The remainder will be chosen at random from the eligible pool.
Beginning in 2014 there will be multiple SteamOS machines to choose from, made by different manufacturers.