With Steam Machines now a reality, I’m trying to wrap my head around where they fit in the current market. A few questions and points come to mind as to what I think Steam Machines must accomplish to be successful.
1. Who’s the target audience?
This has probably been the biggest question in people’s minds. Who the hell are Steam Machines for? Joystiq has a great article on that, where they spoke with Anna Sweet, a spokesperson with Valve, who said the following regarding Steam Machines:
…they’re designed for people who don’t have Steam in the living room yet, and who want all of their friends and games on the big screen, in one place.
That’s the biggest thing that gets me. If you’re willing to throw down the money to build or purchase a high-end gaming PC, then why the hell would you want to throw down a minimum of another $500.00 USD for a streaming alternative? It makes no sense to me. But then, people do plenty of things that don’t make sense. The Xbox One has been doing quite well, despite the fact that Microsoft has been walking an anti-consumer path for quite some time. On topic though, I just can’t wrap my head around why any PC gamer would want to get a Steam Machine when you can easily find a far cheaper alternative (with HDMI cables at least) to playing on your big screen and rocking out Big Picture mode. But who knows? It may just work. And I haven’t seen the potential of SteamOS and what it can actually do. Considering it’s in rough form, I’m not entirely sure of what it’s capable of. But the ability to Stream to other devices is pretty damn cool. I’m just not sure it warrants a $500 price tag.
2. Overcome the Fanboy-ism.
If Steam Machines want to actually make a name for themselves, they have to entice people off their platform of choice. You” have to nab PC gamers, to those playing Xbox Ones or PS4s. I don’t see your average PC gamer wanting to get a Steam Machine. Though I have heard a few mention (via Evil Avatar) that they would get a Steam Machine over a PS4 or Xbox One. And in that aspect, I guess it kind of makes sense. You’d be bringing the PC experience to the living room, with (maybe) a little less hassle. So there is a possible market from the particular PC crowd I mentioned. But consoles… man, I don’t see a lot of console players hopping ship. I say that as a lot of my friends who play consoles scoff at the idea of a Steam Machine. And think about it… You’re average console player wants ease-of-use along with the ability to play from their easy chair. They don’t want to hassle with anything. And to be honest, who doesn’t? They want to plug in and play. Though PC gaming has come a long way from the nightmarish days of yore, there are still instances where you may be dicking around with hardware or software for a few days. And for some people, that’s simply not worth the hassle.
3. Provide native controller support on ALL most titles
It seems you can map key functions to the Steam Controller. In my mind though, titles need to have native controller support. Especially if you want to win converts from the console crowd. It comes down to the hassle. The more people have to do, the less likely they are going to stick with something. It’s just that simple. But let’s be honest here, I doubt every title is going to have native controller support, particularly from indie devs, who may be limited with time or resources.
I don’t know specific stats, but a lot of titles as is offer partial controller support, which means you often have to use the mouse/keyboard for menus, but actually use the controller for gameplay. Regardless, to win the console crowd, I think that the majority of titles, particularly any kind of shooter, needs to have controller support. Expecting full controller support on every title, however, just isn’t realistic.
4. Provide a wide range of titles.
This is probably the biggest hitch in Valve’s plan, especially if we’re looking at Steam machines that run on the SteamOS alone. Being Linux-based, I believe there’s 453 titles available at the moment. I couldn’t find numbers on how many actual games Steam has, but this page says over 2,000. That’s a pretty huge cut-back. That’s basically a reduction of 75% of the catalog. I wrote about Steam Machines a little while back, and briefly mentioned DICE’s interest in possibly bringing Battlefield 4 to Linux. If that happens, it’ll be huge, as you’ll see pretty much every developer out there take Linux, and subsequently SteamOS, as a serious platform. Then we’ll see a flood of games get ported over to Linux, which is already happening in the indie world. But long and short, if that becomes a reality, and we see an influx of available title for Linux become available, Steam’s greatest strength, it’s massive library, will become available to gamers.
5. Charge a reasonable price.
I’ve railed on about this point incessantly, in pretty much everything I’ve ever written. The minimal price of Steam Machines is confirmed to be $500.00 USD with the highest coming in at $6,000.00 USD (get fucking real). All that said, the lowest barrier to entry is comparable to an Xbox One. Now anyone who’s read this blog know that I think 500 bones is too much change. But hey, the success of the Xbox One has shown that there’s consumer demand for it, even at that price. But what about a Steam machine? With comparable features of a next-gen console, and a similar aim to be a hub for entertainment in the living room, we’re seeing history repeat itself. But when you take all the aforementioned points into account, will Steam Machines be a contender, particularly in the console space?
Final Thoughts
I’m fascinated to see how Steam Machines do. The Joystiq article I mentioned above brings up an interesting point – with so many options on the market, Valve may wait and see which one does best then support that as their “official” Steam Machine. Or they may even put out their own box sometime in the future. From my end, I hope it does well as consumers need more choices, particularly ones that aren’t about forcing you in a closed garden. Yes, Steam Machines will run Steam. And most will run the SteamOS. But all are customizable where you can run Origin, Windows, etc. The majority of users may not choose to utilize such features, but that’s huge, because it gives the consumer option. Some of my friends on consoles have stated they don’t care about being forced into a “closed garden” but I’d have to say that’d be the case until you wake up one day and don’t like where things are headed.
I personally feel that Steam Machines will be (at least) marginally successful this generation and that we won’t really see them become a force to be reckoned with until next gen. A lot of it reminds me of the original Xbox. If you were around in those days, you’d remember that Microsoft was very consumer-friendly and was exploring a lot of possibilities. And aside from Halo, they didn’t have that great of a library. But they picked it up with the Xbox 360. Here’s hoping Valve doesn’t lose their way as MS has. Though the latter seems to be getting it together after the deserved internet backlash that arose from some of their past policies.
The fact that Steam Machines exist says a lot about our hobby. Despite my occasional thoughts of doom and gloom, it shows that there’s a very real and vibrant market going on in the gaming space. And for gamers, that is a very good thing.
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