There's a big developer's conference going on at Valve right now. No press invited, though, which means any and all news is being smuggled out via Twitter. Or scrawled down on paper. Or both.

The pieces seem to be falling into place. Virtual reality gaming -- once a weird, unworkable feverish nightmarish memory from the 90s -- is slowly becoming something that could legitimately become mainstream. The Steam Box, Oculus Rift and now the connecting piece -- Valve is "days away" from releasing an SDK that provides players with a standardised way of controlling games with VR using the Steam Box.

Valve's Steam Machine may have its eyes on your living room, but it's not a console. It's still a PC at heart, so if you're curious how easy it's going to be to open one up and swap out/upgrade parts, take a look at this.

Just 300 people in the U.S. were selected to participate in the Steam Machines beta, which shipped boxes to folks beginning on Friday. They know which number they are in the beta by looking at the row of 300 ventilation holes on the top of the unit and finding the position of the single countersunk hole on theirs.

It's not a Steam Box, but they want us to believe it is: Xi3's Piston might be the most confusing product in gaming this year, thanks to some muddled messaging and a deal with Valve that never went anywhere.

Xi3, the company making the mysterious Valve-backed "Piston Console," says that it will be revealing more information about the product this Tuesday.

Here we go. It's almost Steam Box time. Valve has just launched a teaser site for what seems to be their big hardware initiative, with a countdown clock ending on Monday at 1pm Eastern (Tuesday, 3am AEST). Earlier this week, Valve boss Gabe Newell teased a hardware announcement for next week. The pieces are starting to fit!

Will we find out more about the elusive Steam Box next week? Valve boss Gabe Newell teased his company's second-most-anticipated announcement while speaking at LinuxCon today, as reported by Ars Technica.

A few days ago, Xi3's Piston, the $US1000 wonder machine capable of playing PC games in your living room via Steam's Big Picture mode, was announced for a Christmas release. And while it's certainly still a "box", there might be issues with the "Steam" part, or at least the "Valve" part.

At least a few lucky customers will get their hands on prototypes the Steam Box within the next few months, Valve boss Gabe Newell says.

Call of Duty makers Infinity Ward posted two telling photos to Facebook and Twitter this week, showing off what appears to be an Xi3 Piston PC, one of Valve's adorable prototype Steam Box devices, with the company's logo plastered on it. It's also got another device (maybe a hard drive?) attached on the bottom. The photo on Twitter came with the message "What's this?" while the one on Facebook said simply "Game development."

Most of the talk of Valve's recent excursion into the world of living-room PCs has focused on how their hardware, née the "Steam Box", would compete with gaming consoles like the Xbox 360 and PS3. But Valve co-founder Gabe Newell has another competitor on his mind: Apple.

I said earlier this week that Microsoft and Sony should be worried about Valve's Steam Box plans, because they appear to have traditional home consoles square in their sights. Well, in an interview with Eurogamer, Microsoft's Phil Harrison seems to get awfully defensive, issuing what amounts as a warning to Valve that the hardware business is so-called because it's hard.

Not even the candy-craving critter Om Nom can resist the allure of steam-powered technology. Today's free Steam Box update for the Android and iOS versions of ZeptoLab's popular physics puzzler may not offer popular PC games via Valve's online service, but it does deliver 25 new levels featuring the awesome power of super-heated water.

The future of home gaming. The next generation. For years now, the anticipation and excitement over what's to come has been dominated by speculation over what would come next from Microsoft and Sony.

With the first of many "Steam Box" computers making its debut at CES, Valve boss Gabe Newell has really opened up to The Verge about his company's hardware plans, revealing that the range of gaming PCs might be even more ambitious than we would have imagined.

Project Piston isn't the only one: Valve is showing off a number of hardware prototypes behind closed doors at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, according to a new report.