Company not planning to ship "any sort of hardware" in near future; admits "boxes" being built to test Big Picture UI mode for Steam.

Gamers hoping to get their hands on the rumored "Steam Box" will need to postpone those wishes for some time. Valve told Kotaku today that the company is a "long way from shipping any sort of hardware."

Hardware from Valve? Maybe some day.

The company admitted it was building "boxes," but their immediate purpose was for testing the company's Steam Big Picture user interface mode. This mode will allow users to play Steam games on a PC connected to a television.

"We're always putting boxes together," he said. "Going all the way back to the Half-Life 1 days, we built special boxes to test our software render...it's just part of development."

Valve also commented on the rumor that Valve was working to implement biometric support in new hardware. The company said it has been experimenting with this technology for some time.

Rumors swirled last weekend that Valve was at work on a mystery "Steam Box." Sources said the system's baseline specs would reportedly tout a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GPU. The report suggested the box could be unveiled as early as this week or possibly at the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo, which runs June 5-7.

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