Steam Box

[Xantiriad]

Worth and cash are two very different things. Twitter is estimated to be worth $6bn but has had to make many investor cash calls and still makes small profits.

Valve would have to hand over a lot of their business to raise the capital needed for hardware manufacturing in the volumes needed for a major assault on the big three. You are talking about making 200,000 units a month. The risk profile on that for a company with no prior track record would be huge. Massive amounts of cash up front for manufacturing. It could be done but would be very high risk and be a huge leverage on Valve.

Everything Valve has done to date has been slow organic growth. It doesn't fit their MO. Partnering up with other manufacturers and spreading the risk and rewards make much more sense. You don't need to know their financial status to conclude this.

[countstex]

So either you pay in instalments or the full whack up front. People have to see some sort of value in a product in order to invest on a regular basis which is probably another question entirely.

If all you are selling people is a shop window, in this case steam, is it an attractive proposition to a critical enough mass? PSN and LIVE can tout integrated streaming services and continued app additions through a UI, steam will never do that unless the model changes. And your never going to use these devices for work, for that you would just get a PC. So outside of the people that want a front room steam player is the market there?

I could see Steam copying PS+ without much effort, offer free games each month, or maybe subscribers get an extra X% off all purchases? Easy to implement and gives you that value add.

[Xantiriad]

So outside of the people that want a front room steam player is the market there?

That is the million dollar question. Like you I remain very sceptical of success outside of gaming enthusiast having a second box.

[Guy_JD]

But this wouldn't be a second box, this would be the main gaming device, it looks like the aim is to launch this along side the new offerings from Sony and Microsoft and with the lack of backward compatability these days why would anyone feel any loyalty toward their current console manufacturer?

I know several people who's main reason for choosing their current console was the controller that feels most comfortable to play with, so with things as trivial as that being a defining factor there's no reason someone wouldn't switch, if it means cheaper games.

Steam will need to resolve their issues with EA though if they want to stand a chance.

[ratsoalbion]

This is a very good point; lack of proper software support from EA hurt the Saturn, N64 & Dreamcast badly.

[magicjoef]

So, after some more reading and hearing about it on a couple of podcasts, seems the Piston would be a low end device, that could play some basic games and maybe stream other games from your Steam account running on your gaming PC? Is that the general idea, or maybe they are working on an Onlive streaming type idea? That bit is still unclear to me.

Maybe Steam will have their own box announced later in the year, when the other consoles are public knowledge? However, I'm still not convinced about the move away from Windows, so how they manage that would be key.

[countstex]

From what I read around the subject there will be three tiers of SteamBox. Low end giving streaming games in both OnLive and from main PC styles. Mid range which I presume will do the same but with power to run games from the box as well (Potentially only the Linux compatible titles). And then top end which will basically be desktop PCs in nicer form factors which will have Linux/Windows dual boot I would guess.