Valve is meeting with would-be partners

Things are only getting more interesting as we learn more about what Valve has planned for its Steam-centric hardware initiative. We first heard that the company had invested in Xi3 and saw some images of a prototype system dubbed the Piston. As it turns out, this is only the beginning of what's happening at CES 2013.

Valve has been meeting with around 15 potential hardware and software partners at the show, according to Valve's Tom Giardino. The company has a booth set up to display various partners' living-room PCs running Linux and Steam's Big Picture Mode, shown above and in the attached gallery images.

We were told that there will likely not be a single "Steam Box"; Valve seems to be interested so long as the hardware is of high enough quality and meets their specifications.

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