Will PCs enter the living room?

Competition for the next-generation of consoles will come from living-room based PCs, according to Valve’s Gabe Newell.

Talking to Kotaku, Newell said the current goal for his company is to develop PCs that are living-room based and can compete with consoles.

Gabe Newell is the founder of Valve, the developer behind critically-acclaimed and nerd-worshipped Half-Life series, as well as the makers of the video game distribution network Steam.

He expects companies to sell PC packages for living rooms next year, designed to go straight to your TV and run Steam to play games.

“I think in general that most customers and most developers are gonna find that [the PC is] a better environment for them.

‘Cause they won’t have the split the world into thinking about ‘why are my friends in the living room, why are my video sources in the living room different from everyone else?’ So in a sense we hopefully are gonna unify those environments.”

And if those other companies don’t do it, Valve certainly will be, and if they do it well I can certainly see the appeal. PC gamers have long scorned the console-user, as PCs have better specs, can run damn-near anything and for the most part games that are exclusive to one console will still be available on PC.

To make Valve’s PC a bit less multi-purpose, Newell said the living-room PC might not be as well-rounded as normal computers.

“Well certainly our hardware will be a very controlled environment. If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC…the nice thing about a PC is a lot of different people can try out different solutions, and customers can find the ones that work best for them.”

Newell also told Kotaku that Valve is currently working on its next-generation engine, but didn’t give any further details other than the engine will be compatible with next-generation consoles.