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

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

Source 2 will be free for content developers

The Game Developers Conference is in full swing and we are starting to get a glimpse of what is being shown there. One of the more interesting parts of GDC revolves around Valve and what it is showing. Last week, the company said that it would be presenting some new living room devices in addition to its Steam Machines and finalized Steam Controller. Now, the wait is over as Valve has announced the Steam Link, Source 2, and two new technologies for its VR headset.
The Steam Link is a new product from Valve that has been designed to extend a user’s Steam experience to any room in the house by streaming Steam content from any PC on the same home network. Steam Machines, Linux PCs, Windows PCs, and Macs will be able to take advantage of Steam Link which will support 1080p at 60Hz with low latency. According to the company, the Steam Link will retail for $49.99 in the US and is also available with the Steam Controller for an additional $49.99.
Valve also revealed two new technologies designed for its recently announced VR headset. There is Lighthouse, a room scale tracking system and then there is a VR input system. "In order to have a high quality VR experience, you need high resolution, high speed tracking," said Valve's Alan Yates. "Lighthouse gives us the ability to do this for an arbitrary number of targets at a low enough BOM cost that it can be incorporated into TVs, monitors, headsets, input devices, or mobile devices."
Lighthouse will be free for any hardware manufacturers that might interested in the tech while developer versions of the VR headset will be available this spring and a consumer version available by the end of the year.
But Valve wasn’t done. It also announced the Source 2 engine, the successor to its Source engine which has been used for games such as Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source (check out our list of The 10 Best Source Engine Games). The company says that its latest graphics engine has been designed for both professional developers and gamers who might be interested in creating and developing their own games. This means that Valve will make Source 2 available for free to content developers.
VR demos are currently being shown at GDC along with Steam Machines from partners such as Alienware and Falcon Northwest that are scheduled to be released sometime in November. One such Steam Machine demo will involve a demonstration from Epic showing the recently announced Unreal Tournament running on a 4K monitor via a Falcon Northwest Steam Machine.
Which one of these announcements has grabbed your curiosity? Or do you think Valve has bitten off more than it can chew? Let us know in the comments section below!
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