Just wanted to start a thread here discussing the recently unveiled "Steam machines" to find out if everyone else was as disappointed as me with them.
I was really looking forward to Steam machines as I hoped they would open up a new sector in the PC market. The idea (in my head, at least) was that these machines were supposed to be smaller, stylized PC's that would look really great under or next to your TV.
What I was hoping this would mean was mobile-class chips in small, desktop-like enclosures. It made sense in that 1) those chips already have all of the super power-saving features built into them, so they would run quiet and could be left on all the time to double as a media server in addition to a gaming rig 2) they would strike consumers as closer to a console where you could just take your little box, plug it into your TV and be done with it and 3) you'd still get good gaming performance out of them when needed as you could beef up the cooling and assume that they could suck as much power out of the wall as they wanted.
Instead of capitalizing on this idea, we get bullshit like this:
What. The. Fuck. Those are just gaming PC's!? How would any of those look like they belong in an entertainment system? Who the hell (who isn't already a PC gamer) is going to look at those and be like "Wow, I want to buy that because it looks new and interesting"? Nobody! These machines bring nothing new to the table at all, except for a new, and probably really buggy, OS. There is nothing about these systems that has been designed for a living room.
Now that little rant is out of the way, there were some that were okay and didn't miss the boat entirely:
These at least look like consoles. My question here, though, is: "Where is the IR receiver?" There's no way to turn these machines on other that to actually press the power button. Not a huge deal, but the Xbox and PS3 and really nice in that you just grab the controller, press the button, and it turns the thing on. Perhaps you can set these to wake on USB with a controller you have attached (never tried it before, but maybe you can), but still, these are living room PC's. Why can I use them to stream my media as well? Also, these things won't be left on all the time as they suck too much power, but consoles are the same, so I supposed that's okay.
Finally, there were some that were along the lines of what I was hoping for:
Those are more like what I was expected. Even then, though, the Zotac and the Gigabyte one only have integrated graphics. What the heck? Integrated graphics are used to save power, why use that here? Of them all, the Alienware seems the most promising. Apparently it's going to have Intel+nVidia mobile parts. The Maingear is similar, but with AMD. Still, two out of 14? Come on guys, what the hell.
Am I the only one that feels this way?
I was really looking forward to Steam machines as I hoped they would open up a new sector in the PC market. The idea (in my head, at least) was that these machines were supposed to be smaller, stylized PC's that would look really great under or next to your TV.
What I was hoping this would mean was mobile-class chips in small, desktop-like enclosures. It made sense in that 1) those chips already have all of the super power-saving features built into them, so they would run quiet and could be left on all the time to double as a media server in addition to a gaming rig 2) they would strike consumers as closer to a console where you could just take your little box, plug it into your TV and be done with it and 3) you'd still get good gaming performance out of them when needed as you could beef up the cooling and assume that they could suck as much power out of the wall as they wanted.
Instead of capitalizing on this idea, we get bullshit like this:
What. The. Fuck. Those are just gaming PC's!? How would any of those look like they belong in an entertainment system? Who the hell (who isn't already a PC gamer) is going to look at those and be like "Wow, I want to buy that because it looks new and interesting"? Nobody! These machines bring nothing new to the table at all, except for a new, and probably really buggy, OS. There is nothing about these systems that has been designed for a living room.
Now that little rant is out of the way, there were some that were okay and didn't miss the boat entirely:
These at least look like consoles. My question here, though, is: "Where is the IR receiver?" There's no way to turn these machines on other that to actually press the power button. Not a huge deal, but the Xbox and PS3 and really nice in that you just grab the controller, press the button, and it turns the thing on. Perhaps you can set these to wake on USB with a controller you have attached (never tried it before, but maybe you can), but still, these are living room PC's. Why can I use them to stream my media as well? Also, these things won't be left on all the time as they suck too much power, but consoles are the same, so I supposed that's okay.
Finally, there were some that were along the lines of what I was hoping for:
Those are more like what I was expected. Even then, though, the Zotac and the Gigabyte one only have integrated graphics. What the heck? Integrated graphics are used to save power, why use that here? Of them all, the Alienware seems the most promising. Apparently it's going to have Intel+nVidia mobile parts. The Maingear is similar, but with AMD. Still, two out of 14? Come on guys, what the hell.
Am I the only one that feels this way?