Ben Krasnow, Valve electrical engineer and mad genius, has told Engadget that Valve will not be announcing plans for a consumer-friendly "Steam Box" PC this year. The news comes after German site Golem.de reported that Klasnow himself claimed Valve would make such an announcement. The alleged comments would have been made during a talk at the EHSM conference in Berlin last month, which Klasnow attended.

"With regards to the Steam Box news - there has been a lot of things stated in the media which I didn't say," Krasnow tells Engadget, "For example, it's true that we are working on getting Steam into the living room, and are planning for a hardware box, but we have no current plans to announce anything in 2013." Yesterday's report also stated that the device would run on Linux, though Krasnow says may or may not happen in the end. Still, even if Valve's official Steam Box won't be revealed this year, he says the company has many other hardware projects in the works that likely will be.

Valve itself, meanwhile, tells Engadget that "Many PCs optimized for Steam and Big Picture will be shipping later this year," and that the company will brings some of these to its CES meetings, along with its own in-house prototypes. Indeed, smaller PCs designed for Steam and Big Picture mode are already being announced, specifically Xi3's diminutive "Piston" models revealed earlier this week. As if to drive the point home, Xi3's new PC was partially funded by Valve and will be featured in the company's booth at CES.