Valve has revealed the second announcement of the trio promised for this week. The second announcement is Steam Machines.
As expected, Valve will release its own prototype Steam Machine while giving other manufacturers complete freedom to release other machines with different prices and configurations.
"We want you to be able to choose the hardware that makes sense for you, so we are working with multiple partners to bring a variety of Steam gaming machines to market during 2014, all of them running SteamOS," announced the company.
Hardware enthusiasts will be able to build their own Steam Machines or customize the ones they buy as they see fit.
Needless to say, Steam Machines support mouse and keyboard in addition to gamepad; however, it looks like Valve still has something up its sleeve related to input. "Steam and SteamOS work well with gamepads, too. Stay tuned, though - we have some more to say very soon on the topic of input," reads the Steam Machine FAQ.
Steam Machines will be available early in 2014. In the meanwhile, Valve is conducting a limited hardware beta with 300 selected Steam users.