Valve Announces Link, Source 2, SteamVR and More at GDC

Marking the 13th anniversary of it’s first public announcement of Steam, Valve announced a number of product and technologies at this week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Steam Machines and PCs will be able to take advantage of a new product announced at GDC called Steam Link. Designed to extend your Steam experience to any room in the house, Steam Link allows you to stream all your Steam content from any PC or Steam Machine on the same home network. Supporting 1080p at 60Hz with low latency, Steam Link will be available this November for $49.99, and available with a Steam Controller for an additional $49.99.

Steam Machines from partners Alienware and Falcon Northwest are being shown, with Machines from a dozen other partners slated to release this November. Steam Machines will start at the same price point as game consoles, with higher performance. Customers interested in the best possible gaming experience can choose whichever components meet their needs.

Valve are also showing a virtual reality (VR) headset. Developer versions of the headset will be available this spring, and partner HTC will ship their Vive headset to consumers by the end of the year. Two new technologies are part of the VR release – a room scale tracking system codenamed Lighthouse, and a VR input system.

Lastly, Valve announced the Source 2 engine, the successor to the Source engine used in Valve’s games since the launch of Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2. Also as part of supporting PC gaming, Valve announced that it will be releasing a Vulkan-compatible version of the Source 2 engine.