It seem like as Microsoft is becoming more closed, with them making more hardware such as the Surfaces, and now Nokia Phones, Valve is trying to take their place as an open platform that all hardware manufacturers can use.

I wonder if we are going to see Steam Office and Steam Word Processing, next.

As PC's they might be fine, but that seems expensive for what is a console.

halflife3

Good riddance to Valve. One less opponent for Nintendo's domination...

I really don't see who this is marketed for. Console gamers have most likely already chosen either the PS4, One, or Wii U. Casual gamers will probably stick to phones, tablets, handhelds, with a few jumping to the lower priced consoles. And diehard PC gamers have probably already upgraded to the components listed, but at a cheaper cost.

Which brings me to cost. How much are these things going to be going for? $600 for the entry price? If they want to compete with the PS4 on power, without the chip customization and programming optimization, it seems possible. Especially with Valve and the manufacturers wanting a cut of the profit. Let's be honest, neither are going to break even or take a loss on the HW, as the console manufacturers do. I also doubt they going to just start off buying millions and millions of parts in bulk. Not when they don't know how these things will sell, how many different versions there will be, and which will turn out to be the most popular set up.

I just don't see these selling too well. At most, I think they'll be lucky to even get a 1/4 of the PS4's sales.

Everyone who's looking for an excuse not to get a PS4 or an Xbox One.^

The problem with that is that those 300 free prototypes are just test boxes that will be used to discover, identify, learn and solve problems for when the real machines come out. And unless Valve decides to go only with Nvidia cards on its machines, which would be a pretty stupid for a company that constantly talks about being open and for everyone, "forgetting" to do those tests with AMD components is a pretty stupid move.

It's Linux, what's so closed about it? :P

There will be three. I'm thinking about getting the middle one which will probably be more advanced than either PS4 or Xbone.

Damn that thing is gunna be very expensive!

Closed when it comes to hardware, obviously .