Hey everyone, I know it's kind of died down since CES, but lets talk about the Steam box, Steam machine, a home video game console that runs Steam, and why I think it's destined to fail. Now before you jump to conclusions about "oh you're just a PC gaming hater," or "you can't see beyond the big 3," or whatever. First off, I'm not a PC hater. I don't like PC elitist fanboys who ridicule console gaming and say that PC gaming is the only way to truly enjoy video games. I respect PC gaming for what it is; a way to play video games where one can make the game look and play as good as technologically possible during that month. From a hardware standpoint, it's also the most expensive if you want to have it look and play as good as technologically possible during that month. Anything beyond that, you need to either upgrade or compromise. Personally, I just prefer console gaming; no compatibility issues, no worries about being able to run the game with your current "rig," only need to upgrade once every 10 years, etc. As for me not looking beyond the big 3, I have an OUYA. I love my OUYA. It is exactly what I expect it to be; a cheap mini-console full of indi-games that can side load android apps. It doesn't have the big titles like CoD or Mass Effect or Skyrim or any of those. I accept it for what it is. I accept all video game consoles, including you PC, for what they are, and that's where I have trouble seeing how a steam console would be successful.
OK, so lets give a little back story. As you probably know, there are PC gamers and console gamers. Many people play both PC and consoles, because they each have their trade offs.
On PC, you can have the most up to date hardware so you can play your games at 300 frames per second at 10k resolution. However, to do that, you need to pay through the nose to get the hardware capable of doing that. Steam from Valve has many sales to offset the cost, so a game that was $60 is now $10 and stuff like that, but there's a trade off to that too because now the game is essentially locked to your account for good. There are some ways around that like gifting, but at the time of writing this, you can't buy a used Steam game from gamestop. DRM, but people accept it due to the sales and the fact that an upgraded PC can still play the old games.
Now on consoles, things are essentially the opposite. On consoles, the hardware is the same hardware for however long the console generation is. However, that means that you don't need to upgrade the hardware to play the latest games, no comparability issues. The developers don't always drop their prices, but then there are used games, aka no DRM. Microsoft tried to do DRM with the XBOX ONE, and people hated it and it was looking so bad for them that they reversed their decision. Consoles aren't always reverse compatible, but the owner always has the option to just leave their last console connected or just sell it.
So the question is, do you want ultra high graphics and cheap games at the cost of expensive and quickly obsolete hardware and DRM, or do you want no DRM and 1 time investment hardware at the cost of relatively consistant graphics for 10 or so years.
Now some people might be wondering "where's the mention of keyboard and mouse vs controller?" No, not going there. That's just personal preference. Personally I find keyboard and mouse very awkward, others find it very precise and optimal. If I did non-point and click PC gaming, I would probably still use a controller.
OK so what does this have to do with the Steam machine? Well I can only see negatives of both without the necessary counter positives. PC gamers don't necessarily like console gaming due to the drawbacks, and console gamers don't necessarily like PC gaming due to the drawbacks. I'm going to go through all the possible combinations of ways to make a Steam machine I can think of, and why I think it will fail.
Model 1: "hardware just like consoles; you can't upgrade the hardware, it just plugs into your TV, and it plays your Steam library. Priced similar to a console."
OK, so this sounds very similar to a normal console. You can't upgrade the hardware, it's priced around the same as the others, and you're stuck with it until the next generation. Well that kind of fully defeats the purpose of PC gaming right there. PC gamers want to upgrade their hardware. They might like it for a month, but after that, they'll just go back to their PC with the most up to date hardware. But it play's your entire Steam library on your TV. Yeah until the hardware becomes obsolete and now you run into compatibility issues. You think the devs are going to make a "PC Steam" flavor and a "Console Steam" flavor, I highly doubt it. That could go one of 2 ways. When you buy the game you instantly get access to both flavors so 2 copies of the game for the price of 1, well that's a lot of extra work. Sure with the sales you get it for dirt cheap, but they've already been out for a while, they don't have to remake the game. Then there's the "you buy it again," and that's not going to go over well with the consumers.
Now at CES, there were talks about different companies making different models of a Steam Machine the same way different companies make different models of PCs, so hardware upgrading is possible with this, but that means buying a completely new $400 console every time you want to upgrade instead of the $50 ram card or $100 graphics card. Yeah, no. I've heard of people spending thousands of dollars upgrading their PCs for gaming, but this would mean spending tens of thousands of dollars upgrading. I just don't see it happening.
Model 2: "like model 1, but you can upgrade the hardware with proprietary parts."
OK, little less like a console, little more like a PC. You can now upgrade the hardware to get better performance but it's all proprietary like console add-ons. So what's the problem here? Well this means that you don't have the freedom of part selection like with PCs. If your PC has parts from brand X, but brand Y has better parts, you can change them and get better performance or whatever made them better. It's also got the free market in it's favor so if the performance between 2 brands is the same but one is cheaper, you can get the cheaper. However, if it's proprietary, you're screwed in terms of quality diversity and price diversity. With the PSP, I could use any brand of Memory Stick Pro Duo I wanted, and I have 3 different memory sticks each a different brand. However with the PS Vita, Sony went completely proprietary, so now instead of a $20 32-gig micro-SD card, it's $100 for a 16-gig proprietary memory card, and if those memory cards suck, well you're screwed. If the Steam machine used proprietary upgradable parts, I would expect similar price gouging like with the PSP/Vita example.
Model 3: "like models 1 and 2, but uses standard computer parts."
Soooo, a dedicated PC with HDMI out. With this one, it's almost exactly the same as the gamer's normal PC. They would essentially have 2 PCs, with the only difference being that one can't do all the other things that their PC can do, like word processing. If it could do the other things like word processing, then it's exactly the same as their PC, and unless they want to have 1 PC upstairs and 1 PC downstairs or something like that, then there's absolutely no reason to buy the Steam machine since it does everything that their PC does.
"But what about the console gamer? The steam machine would act like a gateway to the glorious PC master race." Ummm, no. Remember when I talked about the drawbacks of PC gaming, like DRM and high price for hardware. Console gamers don't want that. When the PS3 launched, the console gamers didn't want it because of the high price. Part of the reason the Vita is hurting is because of the proprietary memory cards. The main reason it's hurting is because Sony isn't marketing it well, but the proprietary memory cards are an issue. They also don't like the DRM. Remember the XBOX ONE reveal and the DRM on all games; I've heard it compared to Steam, Model 1 of the Steam machine was essentially the XBOX ONE's original concept minus the kinect. Console gamers don't accept DRM, they don't want to worry about hardware upgrades, especially proprietary ones. SegaCD and 32X anyone? Proprietary hardware upgrades that weren't all that great. They might buy a model 3, but at that point they're already crossing over to PC gaming and that will just be their first gaming PC. In order for a Steam machine to appeal to console gamers, it would need to not have DRM and have hardware that will last for an entire generation, and with that you revolutionize Steam to the point that console gaming in general becomes completely irrelevant because now you took away the drawbacks of PC gaming, essentially meaning that the Steam machine killed itself.
I just honestly don't see who a Steam machine would appeal to. You aren't going to get the console gamer because it doesn't have the benefits of console gaming. You aren't going to get the PC gamer because it doesn't have the benefits of PC gaming without getting ridiculous. It's not even in the same league as the OUYA. I doubt upon initial boot up the Steam machine will say "thank-you for buying us, we made it easy for you to open up and tinker with, doing so will not void the warranty," nor will it cost $100 and give you the ability to sideload android apps. I just can't imagine who would buy a Steam machine outside of collectors like me.
Yes, at some point I would probably buy a Steam machine, because I am a collector and I like consoles. I didn't buy my OUYA because I wanted an open source console or a digital distribution indi-game console, I wanted this will-be obscure piece of video game history while it's still cheap. Well this has been happy gamer, and remember, if you try to please everyone, you please no one.
