I believe the future of video games will be paved by innovation, and no company stands out as being a pioneer as much as Valve at the moment. When you’re a member of their Steam service, you get some of the top video games for the lowest prices. Plus, there’s a community where you can share your games and sales that rival a Walmart or a GameStop.

Their next project is the Steam Machine. It will be a gaming console expected sometime next year. We have a look at the prototype that will ship out to 300 lucky Steam members this year. Valve designed the system to be able to handle a graphics card from a Nvidia GTX660, all the way to a Titan. The console won’t look out of place in your home and is  going to prioritize cooling, with plastic dividing the innards into separate zones for the CPU (vented out the top), power supply (out the side) and video card (out the back).

steam-machine-prototype_1020.0_cinema_720.0Valve is also producing a controller which hasn’t been revealed yet. The company said it includes 16 buttons, a touchscreen and two circular trackpads with haptic feedback. Designer Greg Coomer said it wanted users to “have control over the input experience through software.”

We’ll keep you posted as more Steam Machine news comes to DFAT, and we get to reveal more about the system from Valve!

~Chaz