Introduction

It's funny, one of my previous editorials, "The Future of Gaming - Are Developers and Console Makers Ready?" covered how there needs to be a change in gaming, with my next editorial, "The state of gaming - What will be the next big push in the world of games?", covering it in detail, of where it could possibly go.

I cited not only specifically Valve, but, Half-Life 3 as this huge push we require to usher in a new wave of games, and a new sense of awesomeness among games, instead of hype-creating machines and marketing magic that we see with the latest iterations of Call of Duty for example.

I actually named-called Half-Life 3 as a savior, and this week we have news popping up of a potential "Steam Box" from Valve. What would make this work? Could it work? Could it change things for not only gaming, but PC-exclusives, Valve themselves, sequels to Valve's games, and the biggest question of all: gaming itself?

What we need to ask ourselves is would the market accept another player who wants to jam in another device into that rack of goodies in your living room? Microsoft had a gigantic enemy in both Sony and Nintendo when they started plans for the Xbox, but look at them now.

Valve are probably one of the only companies capable of launching a machine to play games, a standalone PC, capable of competing with consoles, and ushering in a new era of gaming.