It has just been announced that the lucky 300 testers will be sent their beta test Steam Machines & Controller on the 13th of December.
They shared some pictures of the units being assembled too!
Cross your fingers folks as it could be you...if you live in the US that is. So sadly you won't be seeing any coverage of an actual box here on GOL due to me living in the UK, but rest assured when the come out at retail I will be grabbing one ASAP to cover it for you.
Source Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
QuoteThe 300 selected beta testers are being notified today (at about 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time) that they’ll soon receive Steam hardware and SteamOS for testing. Each selected user is also being awarded a special badge on their Steam Community profile, indicating that they’re a beta participant. In addition, a number of games that run natively on SteamOS are being added to each selected user’s library.
We’ve had to make the difficult decision to limit our beta to the U.S. only, because of regulatory hurdles. This was not our original plan, and it means we can’t collect beta feedback from Steam customers world-wide, which is pretty unfortunate. All things considered, we’re sure it was the right decision, because the alternative was to delay the whole beta beyond the point when we’d be able to incorporate any feedback into the 2014 products. This decision only affects Valve’s 300 prototype units; the commercial versions of Steam Machines that are for sale in 2014 won’t be affected by this. More information on those will be announced at CES on January 6.
SteamOS will be made available when the prototype hardware ships. It will be downloadable by individual users and commercial OEMs. (But unless you’re an intrepid Linux hacker already, we’re going to recommend that you wait until later in 2014 to try it out.) We’ll post info soon about that. Oh, and stay tuned for the in-home streaming beta to begin soon, too!
Happy holidays. And happy unboxing to our beta testers. See you on Steam.
They shared some pictures of the units being assembled too!
Cross your fingers folks as it could be you...if you live in the US that is. So sadly you won't be seeing any coverage of an actual box here on GOL due to me living in the UK, but rest assured when the come out at retail I will be grabbing one ASAP to cover it for you.
Source Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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9 comments
tuxisagamer Dec 11, 2013
A tidbit not covered in this article is that SteamOS will be downloadable when the prototypes ship. I was expecting this. But its nice to have confirmation.
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Quoting: Quote from tuxisagamerA tidbit not covered in this article is that SteamOS will be downloadable when the prototypes ship. I was expecting this. But its nice to have confirmation.Well it is in the quoted segment ;)
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Why is it limited only U.S? I dont know, why they didnt write it early!
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They planned to open the beta worldwide but it seems that they ran into problems with that. I guess there are a few reasons like logistics (cost for shipping and handling bigger than expected) or locale legislation in certain countries related to non commercial products (would have to be approved with specific norms and such).
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In the EU, for example, the CE marking and associated regulations are mandatory for consumer electronics. For OEMs it's standard business practice during development, but Valve may not have realised they required it before shipping out prototypes, so it gets held up until they can sort that out.
Developing your own hardware is a bit of a learning experience.
Developing your own hardware is a bit of a learning experience.
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tuxisagamer Dec 11, 2013
Quoting: Quote from liamdaweOops, you're right. Apparently work has fried my brains.Quoting: Quote from tuxisagamerA tidbit not covered in this article is that SteamOS will be downloadable when the prototypes ship. I was expecting this. But its nice to have confirmation.Well it is in the quoted segment ;)
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well, that's a downer
not there was any chance in hell I'd win but just on principle...
not there was any chance in hell I'd win but just on principle...
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philip550c Dec 12, 2013
It'll be alright guys, even those of us in the states wont be getting it, I cant imagine how large the pool was and to only go with 300 means almost no one got one. You can just build your own and grab the steamOS. The hardware is kind of irrelevant except maybe the controller.
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I'm thinking this looks like the netbook's promise. We have the promise of a SteamOS machine, then will come dual-booter machines (I've just read about them), then Valve and Microsoft will fall in love again and the SteamOS will be something taking space in those machines.
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