I think it's a good idea if it comes out at a similar price to the One or PS4 because it will probably be more advanced at first than the two Next Gen consoles and you'll probably be able to play better versions of the games than what will be available on One and PS4, but then a couple of years down the road instead of five to seven with the consoles if you want a system that's more capable of playing the games technologically wise, then you can pick up that year's model.
I also think it's good if you want to play the best versions of the games ie. the PC ones, but you don't really know how to build or add new tech to your computer.
As long as it is in the $500 range and more powerful than One and PS4, I'm intrigued.
The ones in the $500 range are not more advanced than Ps4/Xbone, you need to dish out significantly more cash if you want that. The $500 ones are the low spec, entry level ones.
The CyberPower and IBuyPower Models include the AMD Radeon R 9 270 X Graphics Card for $499 and that's much better than the Xbox One for the same price
The R9 270x is technically more powerful than both the Xbox One's and PS4's GPU, it has 2560 GFLOPS compared to the Xbox One's 1310 GFLOPS and the PS4's 1840 GFLOPS, but that doesn't take into account console optimization. The console versions of games are optimized specifically for each console, whereas PC games can't be optimized for a certain set of specs, as the developer has to make the game work on as many different PC's as possible, each with different specs. The bottom tier $500 Steam Machines should be able to match or exceed the performance of the Xbox One and PS4 for now, but as the generation progresses developers will learn tricks to get the most out of the the Xbox One and PS4 while optimizing their games for the consoles and that $500 Steam Box will fall behind graphically. For example, I built a $500 gaming PC in 2008, it has a GeForce 9800gt. The 9800gt has 504 GFLOPS, double that of Xbox 360's 240 GFLOPS. However, there are currently games releasing for the 360 that my PC can't play anymore, my 9800 GT is below the minimum spec (my CPU is too for that matter).
There's another matter to consider as well. Steam Machines come with SteamOS, which is Linux based. Currently the number of games that get released for Linux is quite small, if you want to be able to play many of the latest games on your Steam Machine you're going to need to buy Windows, which is going to cost you at least an extra $50.
Now redo your calculations using the card that is "actually" in the ibuypower one, the R7 250 (they hope to put in a 260). You won't even be able to run current games at 60fps with high details let alone games that are coming out in 6 or 12 months. For $499 you get a low to midrange gaming pc that will struggle on even current stuff.
