The biggest danger facing the success of Steam Box or any other PC ecosystem hoping to find space in the living room is Apple, according to a lecture given by Valve co-founder Gabe Newell to a class at the University of Texas' LBJ School of Public Affairs.

"The threat right now is that Apple has gained a huge amount of market share, and has a relatively obvious pathway towards entering the living room with their platform," Newell said. "I think that there's a scenario where we see sort of a dumbed down living room platform emerging - I think Apple rolls the console guys really easily. The question is can we make enough progress in the PC space to establish ourselves there, and also figure out better ways of addressing mobile before Apple takes over the living room?"

Companies attempting to make that jump with the PC platform need to sell the strengths of their hardware to find footing in the living room, Newell said — factors like increased hard drive space, customizable form factor and the ability to utilize hardware that the consumer may already own.

"I think a whole bunch of hardware companies are going to be releasing products in the next 12 months - you'll hear it referred to as Miracast, [Project] Shield from Nvidia, or lots of other people," Newell said. "There are going to be a huge set of products that say, 'If you want something that's incredibly cheap, at a price point well below anything that consoles will be able to reach, you're going to take advantage of the PC that's running somewhere in your house.'

"It's like one of those things where afterwards it will seem like it was very simple, when beforehand, everyone sort of denied that it was possible," Newell said.