I am just as confused as you. From a consumer standpoint, I literally have no idea what the Steambox is trying to achieve.
Initially I thought they'd try to mass produce a few models of these boxes and hence be able to lower the prices and compete with consoles, bringing Steam as a mainstream PC-esqe alternative to console gaming for the mass market living room. But now there's one trillion models, which is no different from the current PC gaming models. The mainstream consumer will be utterly confused about which model to gt and they sure as heck aren't going to spend $1000+ for a gaming only machine. The people who would are the same people who build their own PCs for a lower price and also know how to route their PC on to the bigger screen through HDMI and whatnot. So they've completely missed both markets.
