Steam Machine

Whether or not you're the right customer for the Steam Machine, you won't be able to ignore it. Valve's upcoming device has enough overlap with consoles as well as PCs that almost everyone will have an opinion about it. The value proposition is there, the loyal fanbase is waiting, and the pricing might not be as big an issue as it seemed. What remains to be seen is how many people believe the Steam Machine makes sense in their living room.

Discussed on Reddit, Steam Tracking found traces of a reservation queue for Valve hardware. Formatting in a few lines implies that the Steam Machine price will exceed 1,000 euros. Converted to USD, that figure becomes an imposing $1,160. Since the site doesn’t mention the product by name, it could also be referring to the Steam Frame. There have been fewer leaks about the upcoming VR headset’s MSRP, but $800-$1,000 is a popular guess. Its maker indicated that it would be less expensive than the discontinued $999 Valve Index kit.

In case you think I'm making all this up, former Xbox executive Mike Ybarra recently claimed that Sony views Valve as a new competitor. Ybarra believes that with Xbox not active in the console wars anymore (Project Helix is still a ways away), Sony is bringing true console exclusives back, as it stops launching them on PC. He also thinks Sony is smart enough to see the promise of Steam Machine and its potential to be the biggest competitor to the PlayStation. In fact, most of the points I illustrated above were also mentioned by Ybarra in the same comment thread. He stressed Steam's 3-hour, no