Valve has just made the announcement that its Steam Machines are ready to go and will be prepared for shipping on December 13, 2013. They'll be available just in time for Christmas, at least for 300 beta participants.
Both the Steam Machines and the Steam Controllers will be mailed out to the lucky participants, who will soon be able to test the product. Each selected user is also being awarded a special badge on their Steam Community profile, indicating that they’re a beta participant. In addition, a number of games that run natively on SteamOS are being added to each selected user’s library.
Valve states that they've had to make the difficult decision to limit the beta to US participants due to regulatory hurdles. The alternative, they state, would have been to delay the beta into 2014, which would've made it impossible for them to incorporate any feedback into the upcoming products early next year.
"This decision only affects Valve’s 300 prototype units; the commercial versions of Steam Machines that are for sale in 2014 won’t be affected by this. More information on those will be announced at CES on January 6."
According to Valve, SteamOS will be made available when the prototype hardware ships. It will be downloadable by individual users and commercial OEMs. Valve recommends that users only try it out if they're already familiar with Linux, however. Everyone else should wait until 2014 for the proper version to come out.
