Nah, steam machines are too expensive. they don't have the exclusives that the general public will look for. Big name games like GTA V come out late and games like Red Dead Redemption don't come out at all. Any PC gamer worth their salt can make a better machine for cheaper than a steam machine (connecting my PC to my TV is already easy enough) and console gamers are happy with their systems. A few gamers (Such as myself even though i have a powerful gaming rig) will purchase them for the experience but it wont amount into any kind of game changing sales. The problem is that Valve knows that the desktop market is shrinking and are looking for a way into the living room.

I don't know which market is Valve aiming to. PC gamers already have powerful enough PCs to play, and the idea of streaming games to their TVs might sound less appealing than just keep playing as they have always done. PS and Xbox gamers already have their machines, and the SteamOS guarantees less games than both PS4 and XBone, even without steam sales (and if the SteamBoxes sell bad, that support won't improve at all). Nintendo gamers either have already a PC or a complementary console to play multiplats or won't care for them, son no market there either. Mobile and the casual crowd won't even know this thing exists.

I had no idea that the 3DO was Panasonic.

Seriously. I asked this a long time ago, and I'll ask again; what is the selling point of these things? They use Steam OS? Cool, so does a PC. They offer the same library as Steam? Cool, so does a PC. They're customizable? Cool, so is a PC. You can play Steam games a TV with a controller? Cool, you can do the same with PC. These things are literally just overpriced consoles that do everything a PC can, but offer no extra incentive. Developers aren't going to be making exclusive games for it, or else they'd be shitting on PC users, and thus PC users aren't going to bother with it. Why? Because they already have a PC. Console users aren't going to bother with it. Why? Because if they cared about all these features, they would have bought a gaming PC to begin. The whole scheme here makes zero sense. I guess you could argue its smaller than the average PC, but who honestly cares? You still can't take it anywhere outside your home.

Any PC + Steam client is a "Steam machine" already, and a much cheaper one.

Do we really need these? I mean, the console market is crowded enough as it is. It's gonna splash...and by splash I mean Magikarp Splash.

*sarcasm on*

Yes they should be.....

all fear the power of the Geforce 750 (non ti) ? + Core i3 - 4130T for the low low price of 449-500$.

*facepalm*

Its going to be weaker than a PS4, and cost 449-500$... thats going to go well against a 299-350$ ps4.

It depended. All companies in the 3DO company would manufacture 3DOs.

This was the Panasonic's 3DO:

And this was the Sanyo model:

Same specs, same games. The console was expensive because the game's royalties went to the 3DO company and were shared between all members. That was bad because if one of them sold way more units (like Panasonic did), the game sales profit was actually split equally. So all units were sold with decent margins, making the console expensive. That's what will happne to the Steam Machines. Valve get the profit for game sales and for the controller, so the manufacturers will have to sell the unit at a decent price margin, unlike PS4/X1 that work with a tiny margin because they also get the royalties.

I'm planning to bump this thread some months later so OP can eat some crow.

These things will flop hard...really hard.