Valve has made no secret it’s playing around with the idea of developing and releasing hardware, and a job listing for an industrial designer on its website prompted new speculation this weekend.
"We're frustrated by the lack of innovation in the computer hardware space though, so we're jumping in," reads the description.
“Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years,” continues the description. “There’s a real void in the marketplace, and opportunities to create compelling user experiences are being overlooked.”
Again, this just underscores it remains a subject of interest for Valve. When Gabe Newell spoke to Penny Arcade Report earlier in this year, he made that clear. Rumors of a potential "Steambox" have been floating for a while.
“Well, if we have to sell hardware we will,” said Newell. ”We have no reason to believe we’re any good at it, it’s more we think that we need to continue to have innovation and if the only way to get these kind of projects started is by us going and developing and selling the hardware directly then that’s what we’ll do. It’s definitely not the first thought that crosses our mind; we’d rather hardware people that are good at manufacturing and distributing hardware do that. We think it’s important enough that if that’s what we end up having to do then that’s what we end up having to do.”