As for a time-frame, Newell said that he’d expect these sorts of packages to go on sale next year – though it isn’t entirely clear if he was talking about Valve’s own efforts or those of other companies looking to do similar things. “We’ll do it but we also think other people will as well,” he said.
From the sounds of things, however, Valve’s plans for the living room don’t entail recreating as open and malleable a system as the PC experience currently is.
“Well certainly our hardware will be a very controlled environment,” he said, calling Valve’s offering a turnkey solution. “If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC.”