Alienware's Steam Machine
Valve has explained why it thinks you’ll be rather taken with the range of upcoming Steam Machines in an interview at CES 2014.
Basically, Steam Machines are intended to bring PC gamers the Steam experience, but from the comfort of their sofa.
Valve’s Jeff Cain said PC gamers have been asking for a portable experience for their high-end gaming PCs, and Steam Machines are just Valve’s way of fulfilling their request.
“We’ve been hearing for quite some time that [our customers] don’t want to leave all the features that Steam offers just because they want to switch the rooms in which they play their games,” explained Cain. “Our focus has really been on taking that Steam ecosystem, all the features and capabilities that Steam offers to our customers, and basically transporting that to the living room so they can have the same experience there.”
Thanks to SteamOS, gamers will be able to experience pretty much the same desktop experience on their new living room games console.
“All their friends, all their games and everything they’ve come to know and love about Steam, they can now have in the living room. That’s really been the primary focus.”
The market is going to be flooded with Steam Machines later on in 2014, as Valve announced 13 Steam Machine partners including Alienware at CES this year.
“There’s going to be plenty of choice and there’s going to be a lot of different options available for our customers at varying performance levels and price. I think, really, it’s a philosophical choice that we make that we think the choice is a good thing and having multiple options is a good thing.”
Valve won’t be making its own Steam Machines, apart from the 300 prototypes already shipped to a select beta testing group. Instead it will be responsible for SteamOS and the Steam Controller we managed to get a go on in Las Vegas.
“We view our role in this as being enabling,” added Valve founder and CEO, Gabe Newell. “So whatever we can do that’s going to be helpful to other hardware manufacturers with the controller design or building specific kinds of boxes, that what we’re going to do.”
Next read, Steam Machines specs and prices: Everything you need to know before you buy
Via: Polygon
