Ever since Valve staked a much more significant claim to the
gaming world with its digital service; Steam, the company has been looking to
crawl its way out of the PC and into the living room. Recently, 300 prototypes
of the long awaited Steam Machines Valve announced as far back as 2012 were
shipped to some lucky beta testers and now, at CES2014, Steam Machines seem to
be Valve’s main focus and could very well be invading living rooms in 2014.
Hang On! Just What Are Steam Machines Anyway?
Steam Machines, like ultrabooks, are a class of computers.
Steam machines however only need to meet 2 basic requirements aside not being
an all-in-one:
1. They must run Valve’s SteamOS
2. They must be equipped with Valve’s Steam Controller
Though the 300 prototypes were in-house builds, Valve has revealed that it is partnering with 13 of the biggest enthusiast PC vendors to provide the hardware for its console-rivalling concept systems. Alienware, Maingear, CyberPowerPC and iBuyPower are all in the mix with console-sized systems that are competitively priced given their projected performance.
There are however bigger, full scale Steam Machines that go
as far thousands of dollars deep into your pocket and are capable of running
both SteamOS and Windows in a dual-boot setup. Though these may not reinforce
Valve’s vision of the “pc gaming console”, they are quite happy to bask in the
added hype.
Valve have admitted to their concept being an effort to pull
the console gamer into the realm of PC gaming and the intuitive Steam
controller might be just their main force of attraction. The Steam Controller
is an extremely clever piece of kit that uses dual touchpads, a touchscreen,
and haptic feedback to provide an experience nearly as quick and accurate as a
mouse and keyboard without requiring you to have a mouse and keyboard on your
lap.For now, Valve say the idea is just to give existing Steam users a way to get an experience that brings the openness of the PC platform to the living room. Today, a lot of that openness is based in Microsoft's relatively closed Windows ecosystem, but tomorrow things could be different if boxes like Alienware's show up in homes around the globe.
Source: The Verge
