I'm kind of on the edge of my seat to see which way this will go.
Will the Steam Box go the way of the Ouya, a shitty attempt at a console ending up in the junk heap where it belongs. Or will it go the way of the Xbox, a shitty attempt at a console by a company sticking their nose in where it doesn't belong yet somehow becoming a success.
Now to state my actual opinion clearly, I think things look grim for the Steambox.
For one thing, console gaming is on it's last legs. Look at the mobile market. It's VERY profitable and phones in the course of a few years have gone from 90's graphics to surpassing the PS3 all in the palm of your hand AND hooked up to your TV via mini-HDMI and a bluetooth gamepad.
That and they've fucked up their first impression big time.
- The controller is fine for first person but it's going to be a shitfest on everything else(platformers, action games, etc).
- The operating system doesn't support the vast majority of the Steam library. Even if they do have devs on board to make games for their new platform it is STILL an issue. People are going to think "Oh well this game is on Steam on PC why can't I get it if I buy a steambox over the other consoles?" Unless the devs Valve talked about are working on compatibility of already-released games and not future games, then people will rather go buy a PS3 or Xbox 360 than get a Steambox.
- They released multiple versions that only tech-savvie people will understand. Any customer support rep or electronics sales associate(like me) will tell you that the average consumer is fucking stupid and afraid of technology. I can't even begin to count the number of times I've had to explain what a gigabyte is, what a harddrive is, etc etc. Average consumers just don't want to hear it, see it or have anything to do with it. They want to plug it in to the magic wall outlet and have it work. That's it. Having different versions like they do is going to cause headaches for the sales associates, headaches for the consumer and headaches for valve as countless customers walk into best buy or w/e store they go to, look at a steambox on the shelf say "Intel i7 4770k, Nvidia GeForce... what is this? What does it mean? Why is this other one cheaper and what's the difference? Screw this shit, I'm getting a PS4."
On top of that using an Intel platform for their Steamboxes was a bad move. Probably opening up a can of worms saying this but Intel isn't necessary for gaming whatsoever. It's a shit ton of extra money wasted because even the highest end games will run just fine on a 6 core bulldozer costing a lot less. Intel is primarily for rigs that do things beyond the scope of gaming, which is basically programming, rendering media, etc etc. It's overkill, waste of money, plain and simple. Valve could have cut a lot of costs and get a lot of bang for the buck if they had pushed back release til after the release of Kaveri and making a single version release based on the AMD FM2+ platform.
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