14 DAY TRIAL // Valve has announced the first Steam Machines, and there are just two versions available right now. They seem to be pretty similar from a hardware point of view, but no precise information about their hardware is known.
The promise of Linux-powered consoles is almost realized, and they should be available in November if nothing out of the ordinary happens. Valve's efforts to make Linux a gaming power are about to produce some major ripples in the console market, or so it would seem. The first two versions announced might have a hard time convincing people.
The current generation of consoles is already selling at extremely cheap prices, but the games remain more expensive than their PC counterparts, with very few exceptions. The advantage of a Steam Machine would be that the library of games remains the same, even if the player upgrades or changes the platform. The Steam library never changes. It remains to be seen if this is reason enough for customers.
$500 Steam Machines to compete with consoles
Valve wants to move the power of the PC to the couch, and it's counting on few features for this. Consoles need to be small, easy to set up, and the gamers need to have access to the large library of games. This is pretty much covered, and it's not in dispute. The real questions is just how much horsepower you can squeeze in $500 (€450). For example, this is what we know about the Alienware version.
"The Alienware Steam Machine combines the awesome experience of console gaming with a massive library of over 1000 games, all in full 1080p HD on your TV. You'll experience powerful and immersive gaming with the high-performance NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPU 2GB GDDR5 graphics and Intel Core processors. Be in total command with the Steam Controller, which controls your moves like no other game controller before it," reads the Steam entry.
It's a safe bet that these versions of Steam Machines will be at least as powerful as current generation consoles, but the PC games are usually more demanding. We'll just have to wait until November to get a real comparison.