12 Steam Machine partners announced - shipping Steam "consoles" for as low as $499

[kabamarutr]

disolitude said:

torok said:

It's wait and see. But the formula: create a hardware spec and let other manufacture, brand it and sell is something that didn't worked before (3DO being sold by the unknown 3DO company, that was in reality a joint-venture with Panasonic, Sanyo, Goldstar, etc). You need a powerfull and well-known brand on it to sell at retail. And that partners aren't well-known in a consumer eletronics perpective, just in a computer parts perpective.

They are targetting consoles. I really believe that PC gamers prefer PC like they are now, or they would be on consoles. They are going for the living room this time and that is it. I'm wondering how VGChartz will track it (probably will sum all versions in one number), specially because VGC should be tracking Shield and simply isn't.

I'm not confident on their timing too, it should be out last year and not on the onslaught of PS4/One launch, this way it's just meat on the table.

The more I think about it and read opinions on this such as yours, the more I think this will bomb hardcore.

I see many issues with Valves approach here but the main 2 are:

1. Why would I dedicate a minimum of 500 dollars of PC equipment to run a Steam Machine, when all it does is play games? It doesn't steam Plex, do netflix, youtube or other popular apps(yet) or even have a file manager for media. Some of these things are coming but I'd rather have a 500 dollar PC connected to my TV that does everything a Steambox does, and a whole lot more as well. 

2. Why would I dedicate a minimum of 500 dollars for a gaming machine when next gen consoles are the same price or less? They will get much more support and games than a Linux based SteamBox.

How do you know it will not do what your normal PC does? I'm asking out of pure curiosity, since Steam OS specs are not out yet and it's supposed to be an OS that can omplete substitute your windows PC.

Based on the above, my answer is that they are "attacking" Windows PCs as they are. A box with steady, known specs will help customization and this will be aided by the lighter OS. It will help devs know a number of users with the specified machine specs and develop accordingly. Instead of developping "blindly", that is, not knowing how many people can play the Ultra-Super graphics game they are preparing.

I'm a bit on the darkness here though, so excuse me if I am misinformed. I'll also appreciate any info or corrections to the above.