Valve Unveils 13 Steam Machines

With prices and specs.

http://kotaku.com/from-alienware-to..._source=Kotaku_Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow

The 13th Guest
13 Monkeys

Most of them look too computer-y for the living room. More importantly I've no clue what market they are targeting with those prices. Even if they pack significantly more raw power than the new consoles they are just not going to compete at that price-point since either people don't care/know about the specifics of the hardware or they know better than pay the OEMs an assembly fee.

I don't really see the market, either. At those prices you're better off just building a PC, imo. At least on a PC you can use programs and stuff.

They're really banking on the "bring the PC to your living room" angle.

This is very big business for many companies (just look at multitude of hardware manufactures on expos for these Steam machines), that offer not just one 'console' type platform but 13 (at the moment), which I suspect will be cheaper in the future (due to the larger competition) and are more flexible to manufacture at lower cost.

It also important to remember that there is no cost involved (to the customer and to the hardware manufacturer) for the OS as it is supplied for free by Steam and will work on any PC hardware, which is one of the main strengths of this initiative.

Moreover, another significant advantage of these systems is they will allow access to an incredible library of PC games (old and new), downloaded to your living room cheaply (much cheaper than console games) and quickly.

With the shift in PC hardware technology towards laptops and mobile devices, and less familiarity of people with the actual PC hardware currently and in the future, these Steam machines seem like a logical step forward.

I would not buy them as I know enough about PC hardware to make my own, but would my children be able to do the same in the future?

One big disadvantage from my point of view of this is that Steam will be the ONLY portal for PC games in the future (no more DRM free stuff) - it is already I guess!

SpoonFULL said:

One big disadvantage from my point of view of this is that Steam will be the ONLY portal for PC games in the future (no more DRM free stuff) - it is already I guess!

Click to expand...

Good question : Will these "Steam Machines" , or, rather, their OS, actually allow other game sources such as GOG ?

Is it possible to build your own machine and install Steam OS on it?

Those prices most be wrong?

Lemonhead said:

Is it possible to build your own machine and install Steam OS on it?

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Yes. It's a free linux distro base on Debian.

Fluent said:

At least on a PC you can use programs and stuff.

Click to expand...

Don't mean to nitpick but how is this not a PC?

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Good question : Will these "Steam Machines" , or, rather, their OS, actually allow other game sources such as GOG ?

Click to expand...

In gog's case not officially since they only support Windows and OS X but since this is
Linux you'll arguably be more free to do whatever you like. A lot of gog's games already work without issue through wine and porting those that utilize dosbox or scummvm should be fairly easy.

Regarding SCUMMVM : There has been a new release last October.

I am still not seeing why anyone would pick up a steam machine instead of a pc especially since the steam os is free and open.
As for bringing the pc to the living room i did that over a decade ago with a single cable and ir mouse/keyboard.
Do like the idea of the steam os tho and will probably swap once they stop updating win 7 assuming it is not 100% controller based or something.

The Road to Monopoly is paved with Customer Convenience.