DirtyP2002 said:
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Bear in mind that we know almost nothing about the hardware, the software, the subscription terms, the business model.
A few ideas on what a steambox could offer to me, the customer, more than a standard gaming PC:
1) Better value on the hardware
Valve gains from keeping control of the software distribution, thus they can subsidize on the hardware, offering a better performance/cost ratio
2) Much better QA
Valve can pressure developers and publishers into testing and optimizing for a handful of steambox models, much more so than for the average prebuilt gaming rig, to say nothing of endless self-assembled combinations of CPUs, hard disks, GPUs, sound cards, driver infrastructure, firewall and secutiry middleware, OS versions...
3) Focused support
Again, because the hardware only comes in very small variety of configurations and the box is ofcused on a handful of tasks, I expect issues to be easily to research and resolve. No more forum hunting for my compination of hardware and software to diagnose my troubles.
4) _Potentially_ wider gamut of software
Windows 8 is only paving the way towards a more closed, Microsoft-controlled ecosystem. If the windows store becomes a bad solutions for some developers (for economic, deployment, censorship or whatever reasons) then the steambox can potentially become one of the ways for indipendent, smaller, oddball developers to put their software out anyway. This of course is highly speculative, because it depends on so many choices by both MS and Valve.
5) A media box, and not an eye-sore in the living room
The very same box could be a very good media hub (without the dependance on MS' choices regarding content distribution, physical media, DRM) that I wouldn't be ashamed to leave next or under my TV.
and last but not least:
6) no hassle to research, build and maintain the box. A turnkey solution to play PC games at PC resolutions in PC genres, with PC input devices.
As for the troubles:
It runs Linux - the fact that the OS is Linux is basically a technical detail.Nowadays most development is high-level and multi platform anyway. Implementing a Valve-Linux channel of production is much easier than implementing a console one. New engines are surely not a trouble and old games can be wrapped in compatibility layers (virtual DOS for things out of GoG, an optimized WINE for the rest).
It can't be upgraded - we don't know yet _how much_ this is true. I'm pretty sure you'll be able to swap your HD, for example, but probably not change the soundcard or GPU. Frankly, I don't care. If the box is cheap enough (see point 1) and it is well supported for a few years (see points 2 and 3) I might actually like more the idea of migrating from steambox 2013 to steambox 2016 without caring about the hardware/software upgrading threadmill for three years.
It won't run my favourite games - this depends of what will happen of the Windows store politics, and of the relationship Valve can estabilish with publishers and developers. What if Valve ports most of the Steam catalog and strikes deals with Humble Bundle, Good old Games and Blizzard? What if they start selling - as a service - optimized WINE profiles to run a catalog of beloved Window games on the steambox, even from your old physical media.
Once again, we don't know enough yet. But people dissed the very _idea_ of Steam back in 2004, and we know how that turned out.
