Valve's Console Beater is in Beta

Valve has confirmed that it really, really is getting into the hardware business rather than letting all those PCs and consoles have the fun.

The company behind the Steam digital games outlet and a few decent PC games (we are being a little damning by faint praise obviously) has declared its own Steam Machine a Go Project and it wants testers during the hardware beta period. Valve will send you a box, so what do you have to do to qualify?

Before October 25, log in to Steam and then visit your quest page to track your current status towards beta test eligibility
1. Join the Steam Universe community group
2. Agree to the Steam Hardware Beta Terms and Conditions
3. Make 10 Steam friends (if you haven't already)
4. Create a public Steam Community profile (if you haven't already)
5. Play a game using a gamepad in Big Picture mode
You can complete the steps in any order. Once you’ve completed all of the steps, you’ll be awarded a special badge, and you’ll officially be among the pool of people from whom we’ll choose beta participants / hardware recipients.

On October 25th, the list will be locked. So complete the quest before then!

Find out more info here.