VALVE Dances Around Rumors of STEAM Console, Doesn't Outright Deny It

When people are on your scent the only way to get them off your trail is to make some sort of disquise it or get them distracted so you can make a clean escape. Valve did neither of those when their Marketing Director Doug Lombardi was asked by Kotaku at GDC about the heavily rumored "Steam Box",

"We're prepping the Steam Big Picture Mode UI and getting ready to ship that, so we're building boxes to test that on."

Kotaku clarified that this "Big Picture UI" was a new Steam interface that would play nice with those who decided to use HDTV's as their primary device for Steam usage.

"We're also doing a bunch of different experiments with biometric feedback and stuff like that, which we've talked about a fair amount. All of that is stuff that we're working on, but it's a long way from Valve shipping any sort of hardware."

If you noticed he didn't outright deny the possibilities of Valve working on their own hardware but did make it clear that it wasn't anything to expect out in the near future. This blows the doors wide open in speculation about the sort of plans that Valve might have when it comes to developing for other platforms, though they would be unwise to start reeling back after finally giving in to console support with games like Portal becoming staples for any proud owner of the Xbox 360 or PS3.

What do you think will come out first? Valve's "Steam Box" or Half-Life 3?