Most of the gaming community has heard about Valve’s shot to break into the console market. This previously mentioned “shot” is the Steam Machine. The console is made directly for gaming purposes, with a new kind of operating system, the Steam OS is running on it. The operating system is capable of running any kind of PC games (or at least Steam games), making Valve’s product the first console gaming system that can run games for personal computers.
If you don’t know what Steam is, then let me help you. Steam is an application made by Valve, which you can purchase and play games from. The games are in digital form, which you keep in your “Steam Library”. Imagine the application both as a social network and a store for gamers (playing with friends is encouraged, plus every game has a strong online community).
Steam OS, Valve’s Linux based operating system, which is made for the upcoming Steam Machine (can be used on Windows too), is currently in a beta phase. A previous review of the OS states that its concept is quite great, however the installation is rather horrible and there are lots of bugs in the system. The base conception of the operating system is great, so if the company fixes the problems around it, the software could become the best and most stable operating system for PC gamers.
Valve, as usual, is not releasing the Steam Box “personally”. They made an agreement with OEMs, who will make the hardware and compete against each other for a bigger market share. The “scenario” is the same as with Steam games. Valve only made five or ten games, which is sold on their application, they are getting the most money from selling other manufacturers products on their shop interface. With this business strategy, they are not risking anything, it is almost impossible to lose any money and they get a huge royalty from the game developers. Valve’s strategy for Steam Machine sales is very similar to the previously mentioned one. They are producing the parts and the software of the Steam Boxes, however, they are not constructing any Machines from them. They sell it to OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) to build them as they want and sell the whole machines at the desire prices. PC building gurus have already signed an agreement with Valve to build and sell their consoles, such as Alienware, Origin, Gigabyte and Maingear.
A Look at Alienware’s Steam Machine, the Alpha
Let’s take a look at one of Valve’s hardware partners’ Steam Machine, the Alienware Alpha. The company has always been famous of building PCs for hardcore gamers, so our expectations are quite high.
The look of the gaming system is very decent. It is stylish and pretty small. It is as small as a TV’s set top box, which is great, since it is only covering a small place and can be put in anywhere in the room.
Specs
The Alienware Alpha features an NVIDIA GTX 860M graphic card with 2GB GDDR5 memory, however the CPU seems quite weak to me, since it is only a dual core 2.9GHz Intel Core i3-4130T with 3MB cache. The system has 4GB DDR3 RAM and a 500GB SATA 3 HDD built in. In my opinion the hardware has some problems, since the CPU most probably will bottleneck the pretty decent graphic card, while gaming.
Another problem with the machine is that it can’t run games from Origin or from uPlay. That’s a pretty great issue, since Alpha designed to be a gaming system that can run most of the games. Now, if we would like to play Far cry 4, or a game from EA, we have to sit to our PC and play it, instead sitting in front of our HDTV and turning on the Alienware Alpha.
What We Know About the Steam Machine?
The Steam Machine’s OEM versions will be on sales November, this year. The gaming system alongside with the Steam OS seems pretty great. With the Steam Box, it is now possible to play PC games in the living room, instead of in front of a desk. Despite its early bugs, the Steam Machines seem to be the perfect console for PC games.
