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Jaywood2010 on 14 January 2013
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chris_wing said:
JayWood2010 said:
theprof00 said:
JayWood2010 said:
Yeah I dont see this being successful either way. I think Valve is wasting their resources and money doing this. Who knows I could be wrong but I think this is a horrible move by valve

A well developed PC-gaming machine could  save PC gamers literally thousands of dollars.

I highly doubt that people will care for this for a few reasons.  1 it is running linux over Windows.  Bad move number 1.  You just marked yourself off over 100s of millions of buyers.  But that's ok, we are basing it around steam.   The problem with that is a lot of PC gamers build there own PCs rather than buy a PC built already.  That lost them another big piece of the market.  Then you have developers who we dont even know if they will be keen on developing for linux.  There goes another chunk of the market.  How will they be able to market this product to people when they are already set with what they have.  VERY LITTLE AMOUNT of people buy PCs only for gaming.  i built a gaming PC but I also use it for other things which is why windows comes in handy.  Hopefully they didnt invest too much in this though.  

It's running Linux but someone from Steam already said it would be easy to install windows on it as it's really just a PC.  Shipping with Linux is to save money for people who will be happy with the Linux Library (Which is not crap, I'm actually moving to Linux myself soon).

Yes lot's of PC gamers build their own computers like I did, but if Steam can put out a powerful box for around $400-$500 (with their new rumored controller) that will also act as a low bar for PC system requierments then Steam could be onto something.  Of course not all developers will develop for Linux (yes games need to be ported, but don't worry it's easy), but enough will that it will soon be a completely viable platform.

I need to upgrade my PC hardware soon like many people do but don't want Windows 8, I could build another PC, or I could spend about the same money or less to get a PC (Steambox) that has a set of specs that games will be developed for, like console games are developed to a certain set of specs, increasing it's overall life span.

Linux is also very good for general applications.  Sure there is no Office or Photoshop but there are free options for linux that do basically the same things, and it's all open source so the software is well fleshed out.

"Hopefully they didn't invest much in this", what they've invested in so far is Big Picture & Linux support, both of which are already running live on Steam & have turned Steam into a more feature rich & compatable platform.  All they need to do is choose specs, manufacturers, put it together & sell it online like the Nexus is/was.

PS: Someone before you said that the Steambox is not for TV's, and will be for monitors and keyboards & mice.  To that person I say, look at Big Picture, it is a new mode Steam can run in that is designed for TV's and dual analog controllers and it supports a lot of the top games.


Maybe I just dont understand this but I still see no reason for anyone to buy a steambox even if it is a cheap entry into the PC market.  Why becasue you could get the same on consoles but also have there exclusive library.  They are targeting the PC market and i see very few people who will actually buy any of these.  PC gaming has a lot to do with power and people are not going to want to get something that is not powerful.  if it is 400-500 then it will likely be no more powerful than the next generation consoles or a little more powerful.