Steam's Big Picture Mode -- a TV- and controller-friendly version of Valve's widely used digital gaming service -- is the first volley in Valve's big living room push.
She's visibly excited about the prototypes she's creating at Valve's new prototyping facility, but manages to contain herself enough to not let slip exactly what her and her team are working on.
ENGADGET: Valve's first hardware beta starting by next year, wearable computing still far off
Mike Ambinder is the company's very own experimental psychologist and he's been outlining some of Valve's work with biofeedback technology, including eye-motion controls for Portal 2 and perspiration-based gaming adjustments on Left 4 Dead.
It's barely 2013, and already Valve's Steambox initiative is dominating gaming news.
It's not clear what all of this means for Valve's AR work, but it's clearly still a work-in-progress.
Nothing's set in stone, of course, and Valve's still very much in the exploratory phase of its Steambox push.
It's an overhead valve engine with a single camshaft that uses push rods to open and close the 16 valves.
The casual nature of that relationship is reflected in Valve's attitude about releasing the new mode -- Team Fortress 2's VR-enabling update in the coming weeks is essentially a giant beta test in which Valve will measure and analyze the way TF2 players interact with virtual reality hardware.
ENGADGET: Valve's Joe Ludwig on the uncertain future of virtual reality and partnering with Oculus
Though Valve's hired a team just for hardware purposes (20 to 30 people, including new hires and Valve vets, comprise said team), the company doesn't have anything to show for its efforts just yet (at least on the VR front).
ENGADGET: Valve's Joe Ludwig on the uncertain future of virtual reality and partnering with Oculus
It competes against rival platforms including Valve's Steam, EA's Origin and Activision Blizzard's Battle.net.
From where things stand now, though, Valve's sent a considerable volley at the biggies.
We even saw some third-parties stepping up with their own versions of Valve's initiative.
That remains to be seen, of course, as Valve's made no official announcement regarding that project's availability.
Several games are currently in development for the Oculus Rift, and Valve's Team Fortress 2 already supports the device.
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Oculus provided development kits, and Valve's providing Team Fortress 2's VR Mode.
ENGADGET: Valve's Joe Ludwig on the uncertain future of virtual reality and partnering with Oculus
"Microsoft get a lot of things right, " said Jason Kingsley, founder of Rebellion Studios, which currently sells games on Valve's Steam platform.
Valve's chief executive, Gabe Newell, has previously expressed concern that Windows 8 would be a "catastrophe for everyone in the PC space".
Regardless, it sounds like gamers will have a chance to give feedback on those designs, as Valve's hardware team is planning a beta for its various products.
ENGADGET: Valve's first hardware beta starting by next year, wearable computing still far off
The job ad acknowledges Valve's debt to the personal computer but said the firm was trying to speed up the pace of innovation by "jumping in" itself.
Forsyth previously worked alongside Joe Ludwig and Michael Abrash on Valve's Team Fortress 2, which has a VR mode specifically designed for the developer version of the Rift.
Valve's Joe Ludwig says that the TF2's robust community is ideal for testing out the new technology, and both companies are eager to see how the community reacts.
ENGADGET: Oculus' Palmer Luckey and Nate Mitchell on the past, present and future of the Rift
And then Valve's internal hardware prototypes popped up, confirming what we've heard murmurs of for months: the company's head down on creating a PC for your living room.
The 10-foot UI hopes to help Valve's content distribution portal get comfortable in front of your couch, offering gamers access to their favorite PC titles from a gamepad-friendly interface.
Xi3's Piston is the first such creation revealed, though the company's staying tight-lipped about specs -- we do know that Xi3's working directly with Valve on its tiny, modular PC.
In addition, Valve's Michael Abrash will discuss the hardware challenges that lie ahead and possible solutions for virtual and augmented reality in 'Why Virtual Reality is Hard (And Where it Might be Going).
ENGADGET: Stay seated: Valve's Team Fortress 2 ported to virtual reality
Moreover, beyond just the controllers we suspected to be part of the beta program, Newell tells the BBC that said prototypes will be of the Steambox, Valve's living room-friendly PC gaming initiative.
Available for download at www.geforce.com, the new R310 drivers were also thoroughly tested with Steam for Linux, the extension of Valve's phenomenally popular Steam gaming platform that officially opened to gamers starting today.
As the story goes, Political Gamer was able to sit down with Valve's own Gabe Newell for a tick, and while the topics of conversation were obviously varied, one point in particular piqued our interest.
ENGADGET: Valve's Gabe Newell hints at possible Steam port to iOS / Android, may be blowing hot air
Paired with Valve's offering of Team Fortress 2 VR Mode, that brings the grand total of playable things with the Rift headset to ... five or six (depending on what you define as a "demo").
Mr Schreier is more positive about Valve's news, saying that bringing the large library of games on its Steam store to TVs could be a "game changer" since they typically sell for a fraction of the price of console disks.
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