And, perhaps ironically… that’s kinda part of the point.
Valve literally presents the Steam Machine as a possible gaming device for the open ecosystem they ‘religiously’ believe in.
But not the only possible gaming device.
The original idea of the Steam Machine, over a decade ago, wss that it would basically be a performance and component spec standard, basically just a known quantity of kinds of hardware that they could say ‘Steam and most games on it will run on something that meets these standards!’
There actually were a number of pc builders that did their own attempt at making their own version of a ‘Steam Machine’.
Valve is here, now, doing basically the same thing, they just… literally built their own benchmark as an exemplar device, and also now have an operating system to actually center the entire concept around.
I think they’d be greatly pleased if this new Steam Machine, version 2, actually spurred on other manufacturers to make their own… just like how Valve keeps working to make SteamOS work well on other handheld PCs, made by other manufacturers.
There are plenty of PC manufacturers with plenty of market share and they could absolutely build a similar PC for a similar price.
And, perhaps ironically… that’s kinda part of the point.
Valve literally presents the Steam Machine as a possible gaming device for the open ecosystem they ‘religiously’ believe in.
But not the only possible gaming device.
The original idea of the Steam Machine, over a decade ago, wss that it would basically be a performance and component spec standard, basically just a known quantity of kinds of hardware that they could say ‘Steam and most games on it will run on something that meets these standards!’
There actually were a number of pc builders that did their own attempt at making their own version of a ‘Steam Machine’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine?wprov=rarw1
Valve is here, now, doing basically the same thing, they just… literally built their own benchmark as an exemplar device, and also now have an operating system to actually center the entire concept around.
I think they’d be greatly pleased if this new Steam Machine, version 2, actually spurred on other manufacturers to make their own… just like how Valve keeps working to make SteamOS work well on other handheld PCs, made by other manufacturers.