Gadgetory

well the next generation of game councils are here but they won't be alone this is a steam machine a new category of game system designed for the living room three years ago valve the company behind the half-life and portal games devised an ambitious plan to cram the essence of PC gaming into a box that could fit under your TV with steamos valve built the platform but had left hardware design up to others their alien wares leading the charge for over a year the Dell subsidiary has been working to build the computer valve originally dreamt PC OEMs really for a long time haven't been producing machines that were suitable for the living room suitable to sit underneath the television and really good for entertainment and gaming and when we began working on steamos and bringing the steam experience to the living room it seemed like there were three components to that work to us they were all pretty tall orders solving input solving an operating system and really providing hardware to be the vehicle for the for the whole experience technically a steam machine is just a PC running valve steam OS operating system which is itself a standalone version of its steam app currently available for Windows and Mac this year multiple hardware partners will introduce dedicated steam machines I'm here on behalf of Alienware to introduce to to the world our first steam machine as you can see it's a very small device we have been working with valve for over a year on the steam machine product and we think that it really encapsulates everything that a steam machine should be and just eight inches on the side and three inches tall alien wears steam machine is roughly the size of a Nintendo Wii and its price will be competitive with the latest game consoles - we think the price performance balance that they have struck is really the sweet spot for what steam gamers want in the living room and under the TV but though Alienware has built a box the size and price of a game console and is able to produce it on a global scale it's not ready to take on the game councils quite yet we don't really see this product as competing against a PlayStation 4 competing against an Xbox one first and foremost what we're trying to do is we're focusing on the existing 65 million Steam customers who are out there these are existing PC gamers these are customers who have been telling valve for a very long time that they want access to steam in other rooms in their home mainly the living room but the hard part of translating PC games to the living room isn't building a small enough box it's figuring out how to replace a mouse and keyboard Valve's answer is the steam controller a wireless gamepad that places twin-track beds under your thumbs instead of a pair of joysticks it's downright confusing at first but even for challenging first-person games the gamepad seems up to the task the track pads are surprisingly accurate for pointing and aiming and you can quickly swipe across the pad with your thumb to build up inertia if you need to spin on your heel how valve hopes to make up with the keyboard is just as clever every user can share and vote up controller profiles for each and every steam game divvying up the game functions two buttons on the gamepad instead if 15 buttons aren't enough the steam controller is customizable touchscreen can be used for extras we think it's a critical component because without the steam controller we wouldn't be able to say to customers of steam machines like alien wares that they can play the entire steam catalog from the sofa without lugging in a mouse and keyboard into that room if they don't they don't want to the experience that you get without steam OS the experience that you get with a windows-based PC and running that type of system is subpar and in fact most most customers out there they're looking for an experience that's more of a console less experience and really the control is a big pivoting point in that that's what Valve's own steam OS is designed to deliver when you turn on a steam machine it boots into an interface you can comfortably control from the couch with only a wireless game and you don't need to pop discs into the drive because you'll download everything from the cloud but steam OS is a bit of a double-edged sword steam machines can only play games built for Linux not the Windows games the PC gamers are used to valve has been quietly amassing hundreds of Linux games over the past year brokering deals to produce more and porting games itself by the time steam machines launch at retail the company says it will have 400 games that run natively on the platform including a number of exciting new big-budget titles but there's a reason that the steam machine isn't ready to take on Microsoft Sony and Nintendo it's not clear whether it can convince enough game developers to adopt Linux to make steam OS a viable platform over the long haul we think it's the start of something and we think PC gaming is as valuable as it is to so many gamers because it's the place where innovation happens in software and hardware faster than it does anywhere else valve wants to make steam the Nexus of an innovation now we wait and see whether others agree whether there will be enough room for Alienware on the same shelf as Nintendo Microsoft and Sony you