Valve CEO Gabe Newell has said that Linux is the future of gaming. Newell was speaking at LinuxCon, a Linux event run by the Linux Foundation and sponsored by Intel, IBM, Citrix, Qualcomm, Samsung, LSI, HP, and Suse as a keynote speaker and discussed the topic of Linux and gaming. A prominent figure in the PC gaming industry, Newell's company, Valve, released its Steam for Linux client in February of this year.
"It feels a bit funny coming here and telling you guys that Linux and open source are the future of gaming," Newell began. "Sort of like going to Rome and teaching Catholicism to the pope so bear with me," he added.
Perhaps more interestingly, though, Gabe went on to hint that the company would soon talk more about the opportunities for bringing Linux to the living room. He said we could expect to hear more about those plans next week.
"Actually next week we're going to be rolling out more information about how we get there and what are the hardware opportunities that we see for bringing Linux into the living room, and potentially pointing further down the road to how we can get it even more unified in mobile," he told attendees.
The Steam Box was rumored to be Xi3 Corp's Piston machine, which we checked out at CES last January. However, Newell has since said Valve plans to offer a number of Steam Boxes, and even told the BBC in March that Steam Box prototypes would be available for testing within four months.
The summer has been here and gone, and we haven't seen any hardware. Will that change next week? Let's hope so!
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