Could The Steam Box eat at the PS4/XBone? (Sales Wise?)

[TomWiley]

A Steambox would probably feature the kind of DRM-heavy limited sharing as does Steam, and if people weren't okay with Microsoft doing it, would they really be so biased as to give Valve license to do the exact same thing just because this particular console happened to be made by Valve?

 

[deadish]

I really really doubt it will be more powerful than the PS4 or Xbone without a much higher price tag. Sony has already flexed its design and manufacturing muscle to the max to get the PS4 down to $400.

IMHO, it should not try to duke it out in console market and it probably isn't designed to. Rather it meant to free PC gaming from the shackles of MS - who clearly isn't interested in PC gaming anymore and would rather PC gaming drop dead.

 

[Doom972]

If this platform will only run the games that have native (non-WINE) Linux support, I don't see it doing much.

If it'll have support for the entire Steam library, it might have some effect, but brand loyalty Sony and Microsoft get is very big, so I doubt it'll have a major effect.

It'll give a chance for some people to get into PC gaming, which is good.

 

[number2301]

As for why you would buy it, have you tried building a media centre PC? You can go small enough to match a set top box with no power to run games, or powerful enough to run games but 2-4 times the size of a set top box. I expect you'd be looking at Alienware X51 size or similar for the Steambox.

That's not exactly true anymore. With stuff like micro-ATX motherboards, you can build a very hefty gaming/media PC that has a surprisingly small amount of bulk to it. I'm currently in the middle of putting together a micro-ATX PC. The BitFenix case it's going in is not that large at all, but it's still going to have a 3.9GHz six-core CPU, 8GB of RAM, dedicated soundcard and a 1GB Radeon HD7700. That's more than powerful enough to play any game out there, and this is all stuff I bought for a mid-range budget. If I wanted to, I could have got myself a monster Intel CPU, the top of the range Nvidia GPU and enough RAM to choke a donkey.

Sure, it's never going to be as small as a mini-Mac, but it's much, much less bulky than your average desktop PC, and much easier to carry around and plug into the telly.

And yet still approximately 4 times the size of a set top box, and that being my point! Sure sizes have really come down, but they're still far too big, especially the prodigy.

 

[BrotherRool]

Well now we know, Valve solved the Linux compatibility problem and I can say that yes, this is definitely a threat to MS and Sony and Valve can chip away over years if necessary to happen. We have a real chance of seeing almost a total industry monopoly if Valve continues to be smart

 

[Olas]

Well, I assume the vast majority of Valve/Steam fans are PC gamers, so...

I uh.

I don't really see a lot of people... buying it? Just from a brand loyalty standpoint.

Great point, didn't people flock to Steam as a way to escape from consoles? Now we're expecting these very same people to go back to a console just because it has the Steam brand on it? Unlikely, I'd say.