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Valve boss Gabe Newell has announced this week that the company will be launching a console built for the living room next year.
Newell says the company's main focus now is how to make PCs work better in the living room on the big screen. The first step was releasing their "Big Picture" UI earlier this year.

PC packages that are designed to run on a TV will be launched next year, by Valve and by other manufacturers, with each being able to run Steam flawlessly out of the gate.

Newell says the PCs will compete with the Xbox 8 and the PS4.

"I think in general that most customers and most developers are gonna find that [the PC is] a better environment for them," Newell noted to Kotaku. "Cause they won't have to split the world into thinking about 'why are my friends in the living room, why are my video sources in the living room different from everyone else?' So in a sense we hopefully are gonna unify those environments. We'll do it but we also think other people will as well."

The Valve head did note that their console would not be as open as the average computer: "Well certainly our hardware will be a very controlled environment. If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC. For people who want a more turnkey solution, that's what some people are really gonna want for their living room. The nice thing about a PC is a lot of different people can try out different solutions, and customers can find the ones that work best for them."

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Dark Souls II was officially announced last night at the Spike Videogame Awards. We’ve already seen it, and it’s the cover star of our next issue, E249, out December 20.

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An eternal battle rages at the heart of Dark Souls II. On one side stands the stern force of challenge, the very soul of the Souls series. It has inspired thousands of fans to hack their way through two of the most demanding and rewarding games of an era, fans who expect at least the same test on the next go around. On the other side is the bright promise of accessibility. And why not? Why shouldn’t FromSoftware and Namco Bandai open Souls up to a wider audience when it could otherwise be in danger of becoming stuck in a cult cul-de-sac?

There are many, after all, who have been put off by the series’ habit of obscuring its best assets from all but the most committed. Entire systems, such as Dark Souls’ covenants and Demon’s Souls’ World Tendency, remain mysteries to even reasonably experienced players – wouldn’t it be a service to the games to help everyone understand them better? On the other hand, isn’t the very nature of the Souls series about obfuscation and what it makes you work for? Aren’t its greatest pleasures about the slow crawl of discovery in a world that refuses easy interpretation? What would the series lose if it was made more explicit?

As we find out in issue 249, the answers to these questions are in the hands of game directors new to the Souls series, Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura, who have taken the reins from Hidetaka Miyazaki. Their descriptions of how they intend to mould Dark Souls II into a more approachable form seem reasonable. But Shibuya admits that their approach will be influenced by their individual characters. “I personally am the sort of person who likes to be more direct than subtle,” he tells us. “[Dark Souls II] will be more straightforward and more understandable.” We sympathise if that sort of statement concerns you, but at the same time, we can surely agree that we would all like to see Dark Souls attain as great a presence as The Elder Scrolls. How it gets there is a worthy matter for debate, but it’s certainly a noble task.