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"Valve is hiring staff to work on &amp;quot;platform hardware&amp;quot;, lending weight to reports that it hopes to enter the console market with the Steam Box. A job advert for an electronics engineer has been posted on Valve&amp;#039;s website. The role includes producing new types of &amp;quot;input, output and platform hardware&amp;quot;.   The job advert reads: &amp;quot;For years, Valve has been all about writing software that provides great gameplay experiences. Now we&amp;#039;re developing hardware to enhance those experiences, and you can be a key part of making that happen. &amp;quot;Join our highly motivated team that&amp;#039;s doing hardware design, prototyping, testing, and production across a wide range of platforms. We&amp;#039;re not talking about me-too mice and gamepads here \u2013 help us invent whole new gaming experiences.&amp;quot; The advert could be referring to a new line of gaming peripherals. However, knowledge of power supply management and ARM / X86 system design is more akin to console manufacturing, reports Eurogamer. Rumours of a hybrid machine compatible with PC software and Steam games came to light in March. A prototype version of the Steam Box, meanwhile, appeared on a Valve employee&amp;#039;s Twitter account in 2011. Its specifications matched those of an earlier report which suggested that Valve&amp;#039;s PC/console hybrid would feature a Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and an unspecified NVIDIA graphics card. Valve reportedly held meetings with potential launch partners at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. The possibility of the platform hosting rival download services such as EA&amp;#039;s Origin is said to have been discussed. Valve&amp;#039;s Gabe Newell suggested that the firm would manufacture gaming hardware as a last resort. Valve&amp;#039;s next software offering, meanwhile, is DOTA 2, which is in the beta testing stage of development. Watch a teaser trailer for DOTA 2 below:  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/news/a376271/valve-steam-box-rumours-persist-thanks-to-job-advert/>