And to think I was getting so worried about it! But no longer – in a brief exchange with Kotaku, Doug Lombardi stated that the possibility of Valve releasing any kind of hardware, whether it’s developed by them or a third party, is quite far off. This completely debunks the rumors of a Steam Box PC-console hybrid Valve was said to be developing. They’re not completely ruling out the possibility of moving in that space in the future – but within the foreseeable future, it isn’t going to happen.

He said that Valve’s experiments with building small, yet powerful PC boxes are simply basic setups used for testing and demonstrating their upcoming Big Picture mode (a Steam UI meant to take Steam into the living room, and into your TV), which Doug said they’re “getting ready to ship”. This naturally means that whatever they’re planning on revealing at E3 (they have a private meeting room, just as they did for when they revealed L4D2 in 2009 and Portal 2 in 2010) isn’t going to be the Steam Box. Well, let’s just hope it’s something good!

There’s a few things that make me sad. Like… not being able to go to GDC 2012 and consequently not being able to attend Chet Faliszek and Erik Wolpaw’s live post-mortem of Portal 2. But there are some things that make me happy, like when I remember that it’s all gonna find its way online. But then I remember I’m sort of… supposed to push it out there as well – and that makes me go right back to sad mode.