Newell expects living-room PCs to compete with next-gen consoles

Valve president Gabe Newell has told Kotaku that he expects to see more living-room PCs from manufacturers, including Valve itself. The company is currently working on improving Steam's recently-released Big Picture mode, which has seen a “stronger than expected” reaction according to Newell.

"I think in general that most customers and most developers are going to find that [the PC is] a better environment for them," said Newell. "Cause they won't have to split the world into thinking about 'why are my friends in the living room, why are my video sources in the living room different from everyone else?' So in a sense we hopefully are going to unify those environments."

While other hardware vendor offerings could be Windows PCs in smaller form factors, Newell said Valve's hardware would be “very controlled”.

"Well certainly our hardware will be a very controlled environment," he said. "If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC. For people who want a more turnkey solution, that's what some people are really going to want for their living room. The nice thing about a PC is a lot of different people can try out different solutions, and customers can find the ones that work best for them."

Newell also confirmed that Valve is working on its next game engine, which is planned for PC and next-generation console support.

"Hopefully that's going to give us some interesting opportunities on the game side," he said.