14 DAY TRIAL // Alienware is looking to ship a SteamOS gaming PC sometime in September, to be priced competitively with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, its main rivals.
The company has stated that the computer is expected to ship with an Intel CPU and Nvidia graphics card, although the specific hardware details along with memory and storage are still to be determined, but representatives have pointed out that it isn't expected to compete with the company's gaming mini-desktop computer, the X51, in neither specs nor price range.
Consequently, this will be the third-party Steam Machine manufacturer's least profitable product yet, according to Frank Azor, general manager of Dell Inc.'s Alienware game-PC division.
"It's going to be very challenging. This will absolutely be the least profitable system we ever sell," Azor has revealed to the Wall Street Journal.
He has gone on to say that this isn't necessarily a bad thing, and that the company is doing it with full knowledge of the market and turnover it will get from the product, because of the power of Valve. Apart from hit video games such as Half-Life and Portal, the company also operates the biggest video game digital distribution system, Steam.
As such, hardware makers are glad to follow Valve's lead, as it has shown its potential to shape the game industry. Although Valve's hardware partners won't get any kind of royalties from the sales of videogames that run on their machines, as opposed to typical console makers who get a cut of everything, they will still have to keep hardware prices down, similar to the way both Sony and Microsoft subsidize their hardware platforms.
Alienware has revealed the partnership with Valve at this year's CES convention, along with several other hardware manufacturers, such as CyberPowerPC, Next, Zotac, and is expected to unveil the first SteamOS machines at the E3 convention taking place in June this year.
Apart from the actual box, the Steam Machines will come with the Valve-designed SteamOS pre-installed and with Valve's own game controller. Valve has also mentioned that it might make its own range of Steam Machines, although nothing palpable has been revealed yet.
The exact pricing range and hardware specs of Steam machines are yet to be announced, but Valve has mentioned that consumers should expect the first Steam Machines to arrive in stores by this year's holiday season.
Although Steam has changed the way the gaming industry works by providing social hubs for PC gamers to utilize, by offering Steam Cloud saves that make gaming machine-independent, and by raising the visibility of small independent developers, there are also skeptics that point out the fact that having so many types of different Steam Machines is going to be similar to how the Android phone marketplace is, with big price and specs differences and a host of device-specific issues.