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Hi, and welcome to the ValveTime news.
Each week, we'll bring you the biggest talking points regarding Valve Software and the community.
Now, the news:
You might remember a while back when we told you about Xi3's Piston gaming PC
on both our Weekly News Round-Up and on ValveTime TalkTime episode 1.
The device was unveiled back in January at CES 2013
before being hyped up by the media as being the first official "Steam Box,"
namely acting as a pre-built PC with the form factor of a console running Linux and Steam's Big Picture mode.
The small but powerful box hit the headlines again this week after Xi3 announced
that the Piston would cost close to a whopping $1,000 for a base 128GB model,
an extremely high amount for such a small device.
This was not the main reason why the company and their PC made the headlines, however,
as Eurogamer reported earlier this week that Valve has recently distanced itself from Xi3
since the unveiling in January.
Valve's VP of marketing, Doug Lombardi, had this to say:
While no other specific news or explanations regarding this development have since surfaced,
we believe this distancing between partners is directly related to the manner in which Xi3 and the Piston
were overhyped during January and early February.
It seems as if the media became so obsessed with incorrectly branding the Piston as one of the "official" Steamboxes,
to the point where Valve became worried regarding the integrity of their upcoming brand of affordable Steam Boxes
and whether the Steam Box concept could be potentially damaged given Xi3's recent price unveiling,
which, as a starting price for a PC smaller than a can of coke, is excessively expensive.
While we may never know the specific reasons why Valve have decided to distance themselves,
it seems clear now that the Piston is, in fact, not a Steam Box after all.
Time for ValveTime StoryTime.
No, this is not a new segment; Nick just thought it would be really awkward to make me say that.
Valve's economist, Yanis Varoufakis, recently wrote an article for the Greek paper "Lifo"
about his experience with augmented reality contact lenses,
in which he describes visiting an underground laboratory where researchers were able to beam the image
of an animated monster directly onto the optical nerve.
While few other details regarding this experience were shared,
this theme of futuristic contact lenses continued in 2011
when Valve's mechanical & electrical engineer, Ben Krasnow,
published a video demonstrating his own early prototype of LCD contact lenses.
While this wouldn't normally pique our interest, we became particularly intrigued a few months ago
when Gabe Newell briefly mentioned a Michael Abrash project codenamed "Vortex."
The pieces of the puzzle clicked together when we recently discovered that "Vortex" apparently refers
to the spiral shape of copper wiring found on a pair of prototype LCD contact lenses.
We heard that it was about as far past the horizon that Valve was looking, leaving us with only these few tidbits of information.
This evidence so far leads us to believe that Valve's engineers
could possibly be working on some type of augmented reality research and development project.
While this is by no means Valve and their hardware team is definitely working on an augmented reality contact lens
or anything similar, we thought we'd let you all know about what we had uncovered,
just in case a topic of this sort starts to make headlines sometime in the future.
And even if it doesn't, it's still nice to speculate from time to time.
This week's Dota 2 update seemed particularly focused on items,
with the addition of new cosmetic item sets for Centaur Warrunner, Lich, Lycanthrope, and Phantom Lancer.
The update also introduced a variety of new in-game models for items including
Boots of Speed, Clarity Potions, Healing Salves, Divine Rapiers, Dust of Appearance, and Town Portal Scrolls.
These new models appear once an item has been dropped on the ground,
replacing the older and more generic item boxes which have been used up until now
and still remain in use for a majority of the game's items.
South Africa became the game's most recently added server region while the UI received a variety of new audio and visual updates.
For a full look at the update's changelog, head on over to the posts available
on both on the official Dota 2 website and Cyborgmatt's blog.
We should also give special thanks to professional Dota 2 caster Purge, a.k.a. PurgeGamers,
who revealed a variety of photos of never-before-seen concept art images of Dota 2 heroes
he snapped during a trip to Valve late last week.
Several of the images show concept art for currently unreleased heroes including Abaddon and Goblin Technies,
so be sure to head on over to Purge's photo gallery via a link in the video description
for a closer look at how some of the final few unreleased Dota 2 heroes may be shaping up.
If you're interested in high quality Dota 2 video content,
we also highly recommend that you check out Purge's own Dota 2-centric YouTube channel,
available via the link currently on-screen.
In community news, the first episode of the Portal- themed live action comedy series "Aperture R&D"
was released earlier this week on Machinima's channel.
If you're interested in seeing how Portal and Aperture Science translate into an eight minute live action episode,
take a look over via an annotation link available at the end of this episode.
The Open Source Filmmaker Steam group is also running another of their themed video weeks,
with this week's theme focusing on trailers and teasers.
A link to the group will be provided in the video description.
Alternatively, if you're feeling as if you haven't quite had your fill of Gabe Newell news for this week,
you can also check out a 12 minute video uploaded by BAFTA.
The video, entitled "Games Fellowship in 2013: Gabe Newell,"
joins Gabe with BAFTA presenter Jonathan Ross
as they discuss Valve, the changing video game industry, Gabe's love of Trouble In Terrorist Town, and much more.
Oh, and Jonathan even tries to squeeze out some info on Half-Life 3, to no avail.
[Jonathan Ross] ...I'm a huge fan, and like everyone else, I'm looking forward to what must be the most hotly-anticipated game on the planet.
[Matt Bell] Half-Life 3, yes!
[Jonathan Ross] And Gabe's now going to tell us exactly when that's coming out.
[Matt Bell] Please, Gabe.
[Gabe Newell] I don't know this man at all!
A link to the video will also be available on-screen at the end of this Round-Up.
It was revealed by Capcom earlier this week that Left 4 Dead 2 characters and enemies
are set to appear in the Mercenary game mode in the PC version of Resident Evil 6,
which is set to be released on the Steam in just under a week.
Nick, Ellis, Rochelle, and Coach will all appear as playable characters
while Tanks and Witches will appear as new enemy types specific to the Mercenaries game mode.
Valve are also planning to add the Lepotitsa, Napad, and Ogroman Resident Evil enemies into L4D2
as Special Infected via the Steam Workshop.
For more information on this small series partnership, click the annotation link on-screen after ValveTime TriviaTime
to find out what Resident Evil 6 producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi had to say on the matter.
On last week's ValveTime TriviaTime segment, we asked you the question:
Let's get started.
Civil Protection, a.k.a. Metro Cops, are seen patrolling the streets of City 17 throughout Half-Life 2 and Episode One.
They are simply masked human volunteers dedicated to keeping the peace in densely populated urban areas.
Combine Soldiers, on the other hand, are seen more frequently throughout the games as the most common Combine enemy type
which regularly appear defending areas outside urban centers
or attempting to stop Gordon and Alyx in their tracks during Episode One and Two.
Combine Elites protect the Combine's most vital installations, such as the Citadel.
While Stalkers act as maintenance workers,
they are also used as defensive guards within the Citadel during Episode One,
so we'll include it on this list.
That brings us to a total of 4 individual types,
so congratulations to BanD1t8 for getting the question right first.
A special mention goes out to Twister980 for expanding upon his answer
by mentioning the individual unit types, including Combine Shotgunners and Snipers.
Our last few questions have been quite long with complex answers,
so let's keep it simple for this week's question.
Good luck.
We'll reveal the answers on next week's Round-Up.
And that brings us to the end of another ValveTime News Round-Up.
Thanks for watching.
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ValveTime is currently looking to hire 2-3 new writers for our website and YouTube channel.
If you're interested, feel free to head on over to our recruitment video
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You only have until March 30th to submit your application, so be sure to submit it sooner rather than later.
Good luck to everyone who plans on entering.
Thanks for watching and bye for now.