[quote]PC gaming giant Valve Corporation revealed plans Wednesday to release new hardware designed for living room gaming some time in 2014, but it's not exactly what gamers were expecting. Instead of the single proprietary "Steam Box" running the company's newly announced Linux-based operating system SteamOS, the company is putting out multiple "Steam Machines." This came as a surprise to many Valve fans who were expecting the "Half Life" and "Portal" creator to simply unveil a finalized version of its original Steam Box hardware. Rumors have abounded since early 2012 about Valve working on some sort of super-secret piece of hardware that would finally unify the disparate worlds of PC and console gaming. In the process, the mysterious new device was made out to be the first serious competitor to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One's dominance of living room gaming. In its announcement Wednesday, Valve revealed that it is still honing in on the living room with its future products, but it doesn't think that only putting out a single Steam Box is the best way to do so. "We want you to be able to choose the hardware that makes sense for you, so we are working with multiple partners to bring a variety of Steam gaming machines to market during 2014, all of them running SteamOS," Valve wrote in the announcement. Valve therefore left open the possibility that whatever Steam Machines eventually make it to market next year could either be first- or third-party hardware. The company is putting out invitations for 300 Steam users to participate in a beta test they must qualify for by completing an "eligibility quest" that involves familiarizing themselves with Steam's current features. [/quote]