Is this Steam’s new console?

Reports are continuing abated that Valve are working on the ‘Steam Box’, a PC designed to sit in your living room and compete with Apple TV as well as Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft consoles.
Anonymous sources claim that Valve held meetings at CES earlier this year, in which it demoed the unit to prospective partners. Those sources claim that the Steam Box’s specs are a Core i7 processor, 8GB RAM and an Nvidia graphics card.
Interestingly, those are the very same specs that Valve employee Greg Coomer tweeted about last November when he said he was building a “tiny PC” (see image above).
The unit will, according to The Verge, come with a controller at launch that will allow the swapping of components to allow users to customise it to their own specs. That could include switching out the analogue sticks for your own personal favourites, for example.
It’s also being reported that biometric sensors in perphirals will be supported that could measure heart beats and skin temperature and use them as a feedback system in gameplay. 
More rumours: the Steam Box will support Big Picture mode, the “soon-to-be-released” system that will allow you to play Steam games on your Tv with “simple, easy-to-read navigation designed specifically for TV.”
Valve apparently doesn’t want to build the unit on its own, adding weight to rumours of CES meetings with possible partners. The Verge are again reporting on an unnamed source who claims that Alienware could be one of those partners and that the recently released Alienware X51 has been designed as a test run for the Steam Box. 
With so many rumours doing the rounds, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if Valve attempt to set the record straight this week at GDC.
Source: The Verge