Valve, the online software distribution company, is shipping 300 prototype Steam Machines to beta testers on Friday. The lucky few hundred will receive both Steam’s hardware and SteamOS, its Linux-based software for video games, for testing, as the company pushes to establish a new gaming platform.
SteamOS will be publicly available to individuals and hardware manufacturers when the prototype hardware ships, but the company suggests that unless you’re a game developer aiming to learn how it works, you should hold off on trying it out until later in 2014.
