Steam Boxes and the Steam Controller

The biggest news at CES this year was the introduction of the Steam Box, a gaming console designed to fit in your entertainment center and bring PC games to the TV in your living room. Sure, you could always connect a PC directly to your TV and play video games, but this isn’t quite the same thing. To confuse things a little further, there are at least 13 different Steam Boxes of all shapes and sizes. Confused? Keep reading.

Valve, the company behind Steam, the game distribution platform on Windows, Mac, and Linux, decided a few years ago that they weren’t happy with Windows 8, so they created SteamOS, a version of Linux that basically boots directly into the Steam client, so you can play your PC games easily. A Steam Box is just a PC that runs SteamOS and is designed to look good in your living room, and there are at least 13 different manufacturers that have already signed up to make their own Steam box in all sorts of different designs and specs.

This is one of many Steam Box designs

What makes all this work is the Steam Controller, which uses touch pads instead of analog sticks for movement and looking around in the game. The left pad is used for moving around in a game, while the right pad is used to mimic using a mouse in a PC game, and it works surprisingly well. It’s the first time that somebody has figured out how to bring the PC gaming experience to the living room with the accuracy of a mouse, but in a console-style controller more friendly for the living room.