The lines are blurring between gaming PCs and traditional consoles. Valve’s Steam Machines, gaming PCs designed to express the best of both worlds, are ostensibly the prototype for this awesome future, and they’re now available for preorder. Too bad they’re not something you should buy — yet.
Valve is a juggernaut in gaming thanks to Steam, the dominant online marketplace for PC games, and we’ve been excited to see the result of its hardware efforts since we first caught wind of its mythical PC console back in 2012. When we eventually sat down with CEO Gabe Newell, he outlined an exciting vision for the future: a gaming PC with all of Steam’s killer features that would be as convenient and comfortable to use on the couch as a console.
The company got off to a fine start. Big Picture mode makes the PC more television-friendly with large text and easy-to-navigate menus. And its unique controller, coming in October, merges the traditional video game controller with the precision of a mouse. Those two things with a little polish might be enough — but Valve’s long-term vision is a PC gaming world without Windows, and that makes things complicated.