News - Alienware Alpha 'Steam Machine' to arrive as a Windows 8.1 system

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Another machine is ready, even if SteamOS and the Steam Controller aren't.

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Read more.

A competitively priced Alienware system? Good lord.

Hey a quick question can it play any console exclusives ?
answer "NO" so stop saying Console PC and Alienware shame on you on the price.

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Originally Posted by abychristy

Hey a quick question can it play any console exclusives ?
answer "NO" so stop saying Console PC and Alienware shame on you on the price.

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Question, can your xbox 360 play Uncharted? No? How's about your PS3, can that play Halo? No? Then console exclusives is an umbrella term you shouldn't read too deeply into. A PC console is a PC designed for the living room and mainly for playing video games, simple as that, that does not imply any links to exclusives.

Utterly mediocre hardware and they still have the neck to ask for $550 and claiming it unprofitable. Jesus.

I do find it rather worrying (not just for Valve, but the entire PC gaming industry as a whole) that one of the first Steam boxes, being shipped by one of the largest PC builders ever, is running Windows and comes with a Microsoft controller.

Not a good start for valve IMO.

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Originally Posted by aidanjt

... they still have the neck to ask for $550 and claiming it unprofitable. Jesus.

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Spec me a home build with an i3 and a 2GB GDDR5 Maxwell GPU (as well as Windows and an xbox controller) for less and I'll be impressed. Dell's US website suggests that a standard Dell Windows 8.1 desktop of a similar price has an i5/8GB of RAM/1TB HDD but no discrete GPU. Drop those back to i3/4GB/500GB and you just about save enough money to slot in a decent GPU, but then you've got the custom designed mobo and case to make it console-size which costs money, and you've got the addition of the controller. I don't reckon the price is bad at all for what they're offering.

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Originally Posted by shaithis

I do find it rather worrying (not just for Valve, but the entire PC gaming industry as a whole) that one of the first Steam boxes, being shipped by one of the largest PC builders ever, is running Windows and comes with a Microsoft controller.

Not a good start for valve IMO.

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No-one to blame but themselves - they've persuaded partners to create new PC designs targetting a $500 - $600 price point to try to compete with consoles, tempted them with a free OS and an innovative new controller, than dropped a 9 month+ delay on them at short notice. You can't expect ASUS, Dell et al. to just sit on those new designs while Valve get themselves sorted.

Of course, for Valve it could work well as a market tester - will people buy mid-range gaming PCs to go in their living room? If these don't sell with Windows + XBox controller, it suggests Valve will have more work to do to persuade people that a SteamBox is a good investment...

Let's take these for what they are instead of the marketing.

Small form factor PCs.
I'm all for them, personally. There seems to be a bit of an identity crisis with these 'steam boxes' though. Are they designed to stream games run somewhere else or should they have enough internal grunt? A 750ti (which is what this is probably close to, and what the gr8 has) is perfectly capable of acceptable 1080p gaming.

When it comes to SFF, companies like Alienware and Asus have an advantage over self build in that they can custom design certain bits and not conform to form factors. Apple showed with the mac pro that there are advantages to a top down design rather than throwing stuff in a box.

The case looks nice but I would prefer something that was bigger and had an blu-ray drive if it's to go underneath a TV

So it's essentially a middle-of-the-road Windows 8 PC with an Xbox controller, and without total customizability.

Why wouldn't you just buy a standard, middle-end, ATX PC?! Am I missing something? I don't understand why anyone in their right mind would actually buy this.

Edit: Maybe it's the whole "Steam Box" marketing thing that's confusing me. I thought a 'Steam Box' was something far more bespoke in terms of software - but this would appear to just be a Windows PC that happens to have Steam installed.

It's a shame they've soldered in the component which will need upgrading soonest, if you want to keep up with new games on max settings

I don't see this as being a great seller.