Valve job posting suggests continued hardware development
updated 09:23 am EDT, Tue September 4, 2012
Possible peripheral planned after lack of 'meaningful' change
Valve has effectively confirmed the wish to build hardware on their website. A job posting for an "Industrial Designer" with six years of hardware product development experience has appeared on the company's corporate pages. This has added weight to the previous rumors of a Steam-based console, although the extent of the company's hardware vision is still not clear.
The posting reveals Valve as being "frustrated by the lack of innovation in the computer hardware space," giving the example of the keyboard and mouse as basic inputs having not "really changed in any meaningful way over the years." It is suggested that there is a "real void" in the hardware space, which Valve intends to do something about.
A previous rumor for a Valve console started a month before a similar job posting for an electrical engineer appeared on the site, with requests for experience in "Arm and x86 Design" for the task of developing hardware and testing across a wide range of platforms. Although the postings do not mention the construction of a console specifically, the keyboard and mouse mention in the second suggests the possibility of a Valve-developed peripheral. At the time, marketing director Doug Lombardi debunked the rumor for the short-term, but would not confirm more long-term plans for such hardware. [via The Verge]
