I Reported On The Failure Of Valve's First Steam Machines 8 Years...

The original Steam Machines didn't kick off a new era of PC gaming, but Valve's second attempt just might.

If you're experiencing déjà vu following Valve's announcement of a little cubic "Steam Machine"—essentially a PC gaming console—it's because Valve already announced and launched Steam Machines a decade ago. It didn't work out so well back then, but this time, I think Valve has a real shot at finally decoupling a respectable chunk of PC gaming from Windows, if not the entire saucer section.

This week: I'm considering whether I'd like a cube under my TV while hopping on a flight to help with the next PC Gaming Show, which airs December 4.

In 2017, I wrote a big report about why Steam Machines failed to take off, and the main thing Valve's hardware partners told me was that SteamOS just wasn't ready for the big leagues. The custom Linux distribution didn't support enough hardware or games, and only super-nerds had much enthusiasm for ditching Windows, especially as Windows 8 was being replaced by the much better-liked Windows 10.

As a result, the original Steam Machines were never taken seriously as an alternative to desktop PCs or consoles like the Xbox One. Manufacturers started putting Windows on them to get them out the door.

"Nobody was buying it with SteamOS," boutique PC maker Digital Storm told me at the time.

But after shelving the Steam Machines label, Valve kept working on the problem, and now has three potent new ingredients:

The current mass market is clearly less interested in ray tracing than it is having games that simply run well on affordable systems.

On the hardware front, we've heard from Microsoft that the next Xbox console will be "a very premium, very high-end, curated experience," which strikes me as an odd plan. We're a long way from the zenith of technical complexity games can reach, but the current mass market is clearly less interested in ray tracing than it is having games that simply run well on affordable systems.

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Source: PC Gamer