@rempresent said:
It is all looking very sharp, it isn't built to please everyone and that is just fine. There will be other vendors doing their best to make their machines a little different than Valve. The article says that the majority of the vendors are working on the low end style machines which is interesting.
The circles are used throughout the designs and will bleed into the GUI later. My guess is in the middle of next year we will have another refresh of Steam that will incorporate some of the design decisions.
I am pretty impressed with it so far. That controller is going to shake things up. Any chances that Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo do a stickless design?
I can see vendors offering lower spec/lower budget builds. Using low priced components allow for higher margins of profit. That being said, I don't know who would want a low spec Steam Machine. A PC that uses the CPU's IGP would only be able to play indie-like games. It would be an Ouya with a better library of games. Once you start putting in a GPU like the GTX 760 then the cost of the parts accumulate towards the price of the PS4 and Xbox One (both of which can out-perform a PC running that GPU). The only benefit I see of a low cost Steam Machine would be its streaming capabilities, but would make it more of a peripheral for existing PC gamers rather than a full fledged console.
As for a stickless controller on consoles, I doubt it. The only benefit I see of Valve's controller is its ability to be used on older PC gamers that weren't designed with controllers in mind. Nowadays developers usually consider controller support when designing games. So many PC games have plug and play support for the 360 controller. Even Diablo III, which originally was released without controller support, had it's developers retool the entire game to support a gamepad when it was re-released on consoles. I think it's more feasible for developers to be told "keep controller support in mind even when making PC games" rather than console manufacturers to be told "design, produce, and sell a completely different controller just in case developers only offer keyboard and mouse support."
I'm actually in the market to build a new PC in early 2014 and the compact-ness might just get me to get one of these. If the video card is a GTX 770 with a overclockable CPU, I'm in. All I would do is install an SSD, slap windows and dual boot into SteamOS when I play games and Windows to watch videos, write papers and do research.
Doubt that an overclockable CPU would be offered in such a small case like that prototype. The cooler pictured in Engadget's article is barely any better than the stock heatsink Intel offers. Not to mention Intel has been cheapening out on the thermal paste on Haswell's heatspreader and requires large air coolers or watercooling to get decent overclocks. Hopefully Intel changes its act once they release Broadwell.
Also, out of curiosity, how much would you pay for a Steam Machine with an i7, GTX 770, 8GB RAM, and a 128GB SSD (along with the expected PSU, case, motherboard, etc.)? Would you pay the cost of the components?
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