The latest generation of video game consoles (Playstation 4, Wii U, and Xbox One) have not had the success that their previous generations had. Much of this has been attributed to the lack of improvement in the graphics and performance of the current generation. In contrast, the PC gaming market is seeing a slight resurgence thanks to the improved performance of the technology and it becoming much more affordable.

The only downside is that most PCs are still relegated to the home office or a mobile device rather than connected to a home theater system. This is where the Steam Machine is set to make a difference.

The Hardware

At the heart of it, all Steam Machines are really not that different than your traditional desktop computer system. They run the same basic hardware you will find in many desktop computers including AMD or Intel processors, AMD or NVIDIA graphics cards and a standard hard drive. The difference is that the systems tend to be smaller than your standard desktop becuase they are intended to be placed in a home entertainment system rather than on a desk. So instead of a larger tower case, many use designs similar to game consoles in size. A few of the first proposed Steam Machines are simply standard small form factor desktops the companies already sell but adjusted to meet the requirements of the Steam Machine and with new logos on them.

The big difference with the Steam Machine is the input devices.

Rather than relying on a keyboard and mouse (which they may still ship with), the system is packaged with the official Steam Controller from Valve. This is a specialized controller that combined with the software allows for easy navigation of the interface including the ability through specific gestures to type text to the machine. This is both good and bad. Many new PC games are also designed with a game controller in mind but there are some genre games that are heavily reliant upon a keyboard and mouse. The compromises made in the controller mean that games really designed for a mouse and keyboard may be more difficult to use than those with game controllers in mind. Of course there is nothing stopping users from also having a keyboard and mouse hooked up to a Steam Machine.

The Software

What really makes a Steam Machine is not the hardware (other than the controller) but the software. In essence, a Steam Machine is just a personal computer that is designed and validated to run the new SteamOS from Valve. This is a specialized version of Linux that has been optimized for running PC games through the Steam service from Valve on a big screen. In many ways, people might compared it to the Big Picture mode that already exists within the Steam software that runs on your typical Windows operating systems. Valve is apparently reworking their code for the operating system to remove latency to supposedly improve the performance of the games over Windows and it will not require specific Linux versions of the games which would extremely reduce the overall number of games.

While Steam is a very popular service for distributing PC games, there are still a number of problems that will impact the potential for the Steam Machine. For instance, there are a number of big name games from publishers like EA that are only available through their own digital distribution service and not Steam. Thus, a Steam Machine that only runs the Steam OS will not be able to run this software. The Steam service also is only really known for its game software distribution. They do offer some non-gaming software but the selection is extremely limited such that it is not a platform that can completely replace a traditional PC operating system.

The Competition

Now Valve is intending the Steam Machine to compete with the current generation of consoles. This means that to be truly successful, the systems need to offer as much or better performance than the consoles and be priced similar to or less than them. The problem is that most of the announced systems are focusing in on very high performance hardware that costs on the order of $1500 or more. This puts it outside of the pricing of the consoles. Now these more powerful systems offer better graphics but most of these will be hooked up to the same HDTV units that are limited to 1920x1080 resolution. A simple $600 desktop system can achieve enough performance for this resolution so why spend almost $1000 or more when you won't really see much of a difference?

Now there are a few people out there that may hook a Steam Machine up to a 4K display for extreme PC gaming. The problem is that right now, there is very little hardware that can really drive smooth graphics at such extreme resolutions. It is possible but the cost is going to be very high. At that point, buyer's would probably be better served by just using a standard Windows based PC gaming system running in the Big Picture mode along with a console controller. This provides them with the full range of options when it comes to PC gaming on the big screen because why have limitations when you are spending so much money.