Is THIS the SteamBox?

That Polygon guy could have wiped the Cheetos off his fingers before touching the controller and taking a picture.
 
I'm wondering if Valve wouldn't have been better off partnering with one or more hardware companies the way they did with HTC for the VR HMD, and having them build Steam Machines to spec. Maybe even crowdsourcing the design by a contest so the Steam community would have felt involved with the design.

Because they don't seem to have very good control of the marketing message. Telling PC builders to "just make anything they want" for a Steam Machine has once again proven a can of worms with pricing all over the road. I think Valve's intentions were sincere - to take the horizontal approach to SteamOS platform proliferation the way Windows did in the 90's, the way Android did in mobile.

But what's happened is a repeat of the same mess that happened at E3 2013 where you had idiots like "Xi3" announcing the 'Piston' - these guys pretended it was an official box co-developed with Valve and then proceeded to ride Valve's publicity wave, until Valve had to publicly disassociate with them. Now its 2015 and once again we've got boutique PC builders that have simply seen this as a free advertising opportunity for their existing PC's, and saying 'oh yeah, this is Steam Machine'. And then, right on cue, in come the autistic comments in every blog, subreddit and forum - "LOL so Steam Machinez is $5000!?"

For as tightly controlled and adamant as Valve is about their message with things like not preannouncing games, their messaging for Steam Machines really needs a come-to-Jesus epiphany. And I would think they would've learned after the E3 fiasco - that's already 2 years worth of hindsight.
 
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LOL at the prices of those. This is gonna be a huge fail. Nobody is gonna waste money on that crap. Word of mouth is gonna destroy this when you got people going "hey I saw a steam machine, it cost 1k".. LOL
 
I still do not understand: what is a Steam Machine supposed to offer people that have the latest console(s) and have gaming PCs (or know they exist and not want them)? If you have a regular gaming PC, and you want something else too, why do you want a steam machine and not a console? If you have a console, and you want something else too, why do you want a steam machine and not a regular gaming PC? If you have both, why do you also want a steam machine? Who is supposed to be buying these?
 
GearChoices said:
I still do not understand: what is a Steam Machine supposed to offer people that have the latest console(s) and have gaming PCs (or know they exist and not want them)? If you have a regular gaming PC, and you want something else too, why do you want a steam machine and not a console? If you have a console, and you want something else too, why do you want a steam machine and not a regular gaming PC? If you have both, why do you also want a steam machine? Who is supposed to be buying these?
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People who don't have a clue about anything technology wise. The same people who only buy consoles will eat this up (the lower end versions) and complain when people with better hardware have an advantage over them (lol... I used to play CS between 20-50 fps and still dominated the charts.. its the player console plebs! :p )
 
GearChoices said:
I still do not understand: what is a Steam Machine supposed to offer people that have the latest console(s) and have gaming PCs (or know they exist and not want them)? If you have a regular gaming PC, and you want something else too, why do you want a steam machine and not a console? If you have a console, and you want something else too, why do you want a steam machine and not a regular gaming PC? If you have both, why do you also want a steam machine? Who is supposed to be buying these?
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1. Many people even people who know about all this stuff are just busy. And they don't have the time or want to waste it building their own PC or HTPC. For these people a steam box is a good deal. A full package. Go into best buy and see how many HTPC format products exist, you wont find many if any.

2. Anyone who has ever built an HTPC knows that it takes a bunch of configuration to get it right and even when you have it mostly right the controllers or remotes ALWAYS cannot do things you want done. Valve is going to help us move past that problem. For those of us that build PCs we wont be buying steam machines per say but we will benefit from the controller development.

3. lots of people don't want to have a console and a gaming PC and a steam machine might help those people get rid of the console.

4. Ignorance. Do you have any clue how many lay people have no idea they can even hook their computer up to a TV, yes the one they already have. They have no idea. You have no idea how many people com into my home and are dumb founded when they see windows running on the TV. I know it may be mind boggling to you but there are a lot of people in the world, probably the vast majority of the world that don't know that they can do anything until they see a package that tells them they can do it. And if that's what it takes to put computers in the living room then that's fine by me.

There are lots of reasons.
 
rudy said:
1. Many people even people who know about all this stuff are just busy. And they don't have the time or want to waste it building their own PC or HTPC. For these people a steam box is a good deal. A full package. Go into best buy and see how many HTPC format products exist, you wont find many if any.

2. Anyone who has ever built an HTPC knows that it takes a bunch of configuration to get it right and even when you have it mostly right the controllers or remotes ALWAYS cannot do things you want done. Valve is going to help us move past that problem. For those of us that build PCs we wont be buying steam machines per say but we will benefit from the controller development.

3. lots of people don't want to have a console and a gaming PC and a steam machine might help those people get rid of the console.

4. Ignorance. Do you have any clue how many lay people have no idea they can even hook their computer up to a TV, yes the one they already have. They have no idea. You have no idea how many people com into my home and are dumb founded when they see windows running on the TV. I know it may be mind boggling to you but there are a lot of people in the world, probably the vast majority of the world that don't know that they can do anything until they see a package that tells them they can do it. And if that's what it takes to put computers in the living room then that's fine by me.

There are lots of reasons.
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Agreed. I also think that we can (or at least should) all agree that they're not necessarily targeted toward the type of people that would frequent this forum. Maybe in some cases, but not most. I don't need one myself, but I do like the idea overall. I'm becoming more and more their target too, just because I've moved on to other things these days. I still build my PCs, and still game on them, but more and more I'm moving away from building them as a hobby. Analog circuit design for synthesizers is my main hobby these days, and that doesn't leave a lot of time for PC building. I imagine there will come a point where something like this would be appealing to me, provided the specs were what I needed, and the price was close to right. Hasn't happened yet, but it could.
 
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