Valve revealed its second of three planned announcements today right on the heels of its recently announced SteamOS to continue its expansion into your living room. Todays announcement, as many had speculated, includes not just one gaming device, but several. Valve has partnered with several multiple partners to develop various Steam gaming machines optimized for both gaming and Steam, all of which will run on SteamOS.
The new gaming devices are heading into beta this year now and are expected to launch in 2014. Valve plans to ship out 300 prototypes of these boxes free of charge with around 30 of those going to Steam testers later this year. If you would like to be one of those few testers, head over to the announcement page and read the full FAQ and follow the instructions to qualify. If youre lucky, you could be one of the lucky few.
The boxes also seem to be open as Valve is also allowing others to build their own SteamOS box and even hack the existing ones. So if all that interests you, be sure to read the FAQ for more.