Valve's Friday announcement (prediction based on symbology)

Someone found this patent by Valve:

http://www.google.com/patents/US20110105231

It's a controller with swappable controls. Could be pretty innovative, if this is what's happening today.

Ehhh I'd be surprised. If you look at the publishing date on it, it's been published publicly for over a year. A lot of gaming outlets already ran stories on it when it first surfaced a year ago (and now a lot of them are reposting those stories speculating it'll be the next announcement). I think it's already sort of common knowledge that Valve wouldn't feel they'd need to 'announce', certainly not after revealing the steam machines the other day. I figure most people already assume Valve's version of the box will come with it's own controller and what that thing looks like is no secret.

It's T minus 1 hour 23 minutes at time of posting. Time for crazy predictions?

Listening to Bombin' this morning got me thinking about how two steam OS could work in tandem and also what a 'high-end' and 'low-end' box looks like. So if a low end box is just a steaming client for steam and other media, what is the high-end? Is the high end box a gaming PC unto itself? I mean, if the idea is to be able to upgrade this thing, that means it has parts worth upgrading right? Are we going to see full-size GPUs inside high-end steam boxes? Perhaps if you get a box powerful enough, it could share the load of rendering games between two machines? That kind of stuff gets me really excited. What if I'm not just buying another PC anymore, what if by networking steam equipped PCs and boxes together, I am in effect combining some of their power in order to run games faster or better than one machine is capable of.

Pie in the sky thinking, but I can dream.

THERE'S THREE FUCKING Os DUDERS - THEY CAN COUNT TO FUCKING THREE NOW!!!!!!!!!!111

Wait a minute... there's 3 announcements. One announcement happens every 2 days, which is kind of like having 1/2 an announcement/day. We're alive. Half Life 3 confirmed!

With Valve's recent relationship with Twitch.tv, I could also see an announcement of Twitch integration on either the SteamOS level, or even built into the Steam Overlay. This would answer the reason there is a O + O, it lets you share what you are doing with friends... who don't care what you are doing and will never watch. :p

And if we are doing absolutely crazy predictions:

Crazy Internet speculation, you say?

I'm 99% confident Valve is going to announce new details on what really happened on 9/11.

The Valve commission has determined that terrorists responsible for the attacks escaped into cyberspace moments before impact. We have been diligently monitoring their movements since that time and have selected today as apt time to make public our response. With the release of Counter Strike 2.0 players will be able to assist us in finally routing out and defeating these heinous villains and bringing justice to America. Everything that we’ve been doing on Steam for the last 10 years will continue to move forward.

It's a controller.. I was wrong then. Yup.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 compatibility confirmed. Touch pads look..interesting. New haptic force feedback. Touch strips on the back? Tiered triggers. Touch screen in the centre. Those XYAB buttons are in kinda weird spots. Interesting to see this thing in action.

Notice bunch of console controllers all on the shelf in this pic. Nod to history or sick burn?

Surprise!

The controller looks... odd.

@meaninoflife42: If by "odd" you mean, "like trash" i'd agree. What a let down.

hm. The symbol kind of looks like two buildings with a plane inbetween then. Coincidence? I think not.

Don't you guys listen to the podcast? When Jeff says "my guess is...", that's code for 'this is what it is but I cannot actually flat out say that'.

Of course it was a controller.

In the spirit of this thread, I think we should just ignore that... thing, and keep discussing fun alternatives.

@iragequit: we all knew it was going to be A controller but there was hope that there was more to it than that...Valve is getting too predictable in their old age.

But nobody could have predicted the lengths they went to make it unique. If they can make FPS games control as well with a controller as they do with M+K, I'll pay whatever amount they ask.

When I first saw it, I was ready to dismiss it out-of-hand and stick with plugging in a 360 / One controller; but after reading about it, I'm pretty impressed and I'll probably give it a shot!