It seems 2014 will also be a good year for competition between various gaming consoles and platforms. Following the recent news about Steam launching it’s own brand of consoles, today we’re going to take a look at two new Steam Machines from two different makers. With different specs and price ranges, we’re curious to see how the market will be receiving these consoles later on next year.
The first one to be revealed is iBuyPower’s Steam Machine, running on AMD hardware, with an AMD Multi-core CPU, an AMD R9 270 GPU and a 500 hard drive. It will have built-in SteamOS, however, it will not support Windows, somehow emphasizing the future trend-setting strategy of Steam to move gaming to a Linux-bases market. The console will be priced at $499, and will also feature Bluetooth and built-in wireless support.
The second console we’re looking at is in a different price-ranged altogether. Coming from Digital Storm and priced at around $1469 (almost 3 times as much as iBuyPower’s console), this Steam Machine will rely on Nvidia for the graphical power. With a Geforce Titan GPU, a 700W power supply and a water cooling system, we’re looking at a much more powerful piece of hardware, which only makes sense, given the huge difference in pricing. Digital Storm’s console will provide SteamOS support as well as Windows support via a dual-boot system.
One major concern that we have with the differences in pricing and hardware specs is the general approach to console gaming. Up until now, PC games were built in a way that appealed to a broad range of hardware, having minimum and recommended settings, and obviously, users with different hardware had access to a different quality of gaming. The major advantage of consoles such as Sony’s Playstation or Microsoft’s Xbox was that these platforms were identical, and games built for them were tailored to run smoothly at the same level of quality. So, if you didn’t feel like upgrading your desktop periodically, a console like this was always a safe bet, as you didn’t have to worry about your specs not cutting it.
Steam consoles however seem to mix the two elements, providing huge differences in pricing and specs, which makes us wonder how viable the entire approach really is? Will Steam games be limited visually so that even the lower-end consoles can run them smoothly? If that’s the case, what would prompt users to invest more in a more powerful Steam Machine, if the potential of the hardware isn’t going to be used? And if that’s not the road Steam wishes to go down on, then what’s the point of having these consoles? It’s just as simple for PC users to link a controller to their desktop and continue playing Steam games without investing in a new console.
We’ll be finding out soon enough, as these consoles are hitting markets next year. What’s your take on the Steam Machines, and how viable do you see them economically? Which one of the two did you like more and why? We’d love to hear your opinions, so leave us your thoughts in the comment section below!