Steam Machine beta winners to be notified today; hardware shipping on December 13

Get ready to check your emails, folks. At about 2:00pm PT (5:00pm ET), Valve will send an email notifying the 300 lucky winners selected to beta test the new Steam Machine which, according to today's post, will begin shipping on December 13th.

If selected, you'll be the first to receive a Steam machine prototype, equipped with the SteamOS, along with the Steam Controller and a ton of games that run natively on new operating system. Additionally, each selected user will be rewarded with a special badge on their Steam Community profile, indicating that they are a beta participant.

"We’ve had to make the difficult decision to limit our beta to the U.S. only, because of regulatory hurdles," Valve wrote. "This was not our original plan, and it means we can’t collect beta feedback from Steam customers world-wide, which is pretty unfortunate.

"All things considered, we’re sure it was the right decision, because the alternative was to delay the whole beta beyond the point when we’d be able to incorporate any feedback into the 2014 products. This decision only affects Valve’s 300 prototype units; the commercial versions of Steam Machines that are for sale in 2014 won’t be affected by this. More information on those will be announced at CES on January 6. "

SteamOS will be made available when the prototype hardware ships and will be downloadable by individual users and commercial OEMs. Valve recommends waiting until later in 2014 to try it out though, unless you are an "intrepid Linux hacker already."

Let us know if you are selected. We're anxious to find out!