Valve Says 35% Of Its Preorder Hardware Has Been Sold, Won’t Appear At E3

In an email sent to the press, Valve gives details on a couple of things surrounding its upcoming Steam hardware. For starters, the company says that 35% of its “get it early” pre-order hardware has been sold. It’s not giving exact numbers, so it’s hard to say whether or not this is impressive. Nonetheless, if you’re interested in receiving either the Steam Link or Steam Controller in advance of its official launch, you might want to get those pre-orders in soon.

ASUS’ ROG GR8S Steam Machine

Also confirmed is the fact that every Steam Machine will offer support for in-home streaming, and native SteamOS games. That might all sound like a given, but it’s the latter fact that’s important: It means that even with a “low-end” Steam Machine, it will still run any SteamOS game. It just won’t run it as well as a higher-end rig, of course.

It goes without saying that the hype surrounding Steam Machines, SteamOS, and the Steam peripherals is high – so high, that it seemed like a given that Valve would be at E3 to crank it even higher. Alas, that’s not going to be happening, according to VentureBeat. Valve isn’t even listed as a participant in the first-ever dedicated PC gaming media briefing.

MAINGEAR’s DRIFT Steam Machine

On one hand, it seems downright bizarre to not heavily promote its offerings and new ecosystem in advance of the official launch, but on the other, it could be that Valve is comfortable with the current amount of hype, and believes it will naturally grow once the gear is out in the wild.