Valve has made a big push with their announcements of their new SteamOS and the new Steam Machines. They are literally appearing on our tech and gaming news everywhere!
Valve has been making strides to make SteamOS (a version of Linux tailored for Steam gaming) more widely used.
Major vendors such as Zotac have jumped on board, as they would like to see lower powered devices (like Mini-PC’s, Zotac’s specialty) became more popular with the new OS on board.
Whilst Valve has been pushing for their Linux version of Steam Machines, they have not had many of their original Steam Machines out on the market. The one that we all know of is the Alienware Alpha. This Steam Machine have been out on the market for a while now and it is proving to be fairly popular but not to the point that it is dominating the gaming market.
This lack of popularity may be changing now, due to many hardware vendors such as Zotac, CyberPower PC, and others making brand new, higher powered SFF PCs. These new Steam Machines are meant to take the place of a console, and be able to stream PC games from your PC, if you cannot play them on the Steam Machine already.
Will Valve Make It In This Console Gaming Market?
This kind of functionality has been absent in consoles up to this point, and while some may not like Steam being the one making the OS for the consoles, the fact that Valve is making console-like PC’s is an awesome step forward in couch gaming.
However it is worth taking note that Microsoft is going to allow game streaming from the Xbox One to the PC. This has also never been done before and with the Xbox One seemingly more popular than Steam Machines and that a lot of people owns a Windows PC; this is a huge competitor going on right there.
As much as Valve has found a niche in the console gaming market with SteamOS, it remains the question of whether the SteamOS and the Steam Machines will ever become popular like the major consoles like Xbox One, Playstation 4 and the Wii U. If Valve can make this work, not only will this be a gaming console for under the TV, it will be a PC which allows you to open up all kinds of interesting things to do.
2 Comments
If streaming from Xbone to PC is Microsoft’s biggest selling point for DirectX 12, they are screwed. Why in a gods name would anyone stream games that are already on PC to be streamed to a PC? Xbone has a small library as it is. In the long game Valve is going to come out on top.
I totally agree Sandy, there is no need to be streaming games from consoles to PC after all they are not even optised for PC.
I think you might be right, Valve may indeed have the upper hand in the long run.