Can someone explain the purpose of the Steam Machine to me?

[Zappykins]

The purpose is to make a low cost but mighty powerful game/media machine to put pressure on Sony/Microsoft to upgrade their hardware sooner and to give Valve larger footing in the gaming/console wars. Also Gabe Newell (the guy that runs Valve which owns Steam) has some personal hate against Windows so he is promoting an alternative gaming Operating System for games that will be in the Steam Box. (Yes, much like DirectX, but in Linux not Windows based.)

Unfortunately, the first round, it doesn't look like that will happen. Any good Windows 8.1 machine is also a Steam machine. And you could tack on Windows to any Steam machine for @ $90. So it's roughly the same price for a similar performance of the PS4/Xbox One.

I see the big think is if they can pull of a new gaming/media operating system. It could be massive and boost performance and cause DirectX and OpenGL to push and upgrade their softwares more. Resulting in better games for everyone. And operating system is not an easy thing to make, especially if you have to support many different kinds of hardware (which is how the Steam Boxes are set up, with many different components and manufactures), so they have a number of big hurdles to climb.