Valve takes on game consoles with Steam Machines and Stream Controller

Valve wants a piece of the game console market with its newly announced Steam Machines and Steam Controller. The consoles and controllers will run on their also recently announced SteamOS and are part of its new product line for your living room.

Valve hasn’t said which manufacturer will be building the machines but there would supposedly be a line of different boxes optimized for size, price, quietness, and other factors. Even though the product is in development, there is a prototype available and you can be one of 300 Steam users who can get the console for free with access to almost all of the 3,000 games on Steam. You can sign up for the beta program on the site. Deadline for applications is on Oct. 25.

As for the Steam Controller, it has been created to work with the Steam Machine. It features two circular, clickable trackpads with a touchscreen in the middle of it. They boast the controller allows for higher fidelity than gamepads and will work with Steam’s entire game catalog. There are 16 symmetrical buttons in total on the controllers and half of these can be accessed without moving your thumbs. They work for both left and right handed gamers.