The lineup of Steam Machines announced offers a wide variety of price and performance options made possible by the Steam Machine's open design, with systems starting as low as $499 and top end systems rivaling today's bleeding edge gaming PCs.
Every Steam Machine includes an innovative Steam Controller designed for use with a wide variety of game genres, and is powered by the SteamOS, a custom OS built atop Linux.
"The first generation Steam Machines offers something for every gamer, which is a critical part of extending Steam into the living room," said Gabe Newell of Valve. "With over 3,000 games and more than 65 million gamers on Steam, it's important to offer gamers a variety of Steam Machines that allow them to select what makes the most sense for them."
Announced earlier this year, Steam Machines are new entertainment systems targeted for use in the living room and leveraging Steam, the popular online platform for gaming and software with over 65 million accounts worldwide.
The makers of first generation Steam Machines are:
- Alienware
- Alternate
- CyberPowerPC
- Digital Storm
- Falcon NW
- GigaByte
- iBuyPower
- Maingear
- Material.net
- Next Spa
- Origin PC
- Scan
- Webhallen
- Zotac
Alienware designed its upcoming Steam Machine to deliver the benefits of PC gaming in an incredibly small footprint, providing the best balance between size, performance and aesthetics for the living room gaming experience. Its sleek design is both distinctively Alienware yet unobtrusive in a media cabinet. The Alienware Steam Machine echoes the build quality and advanced engineering that are the hallmarks of the brand including a custom-built chassis to provide optimal thermal and acoustic management for a gaming console destined for the living room.
"With the introduction of the X51 system nearly two years ago, Alienware kicked off an evolution of small form factor PC gaming systems designed for every living area," said Frank Azor, Co-Founder and General Manager of Alienware. "When Valve and Alienware began collaborating on our vision for a PC gaming console several years ago we could clearly see we were on to revolutionizing PC Gaming forever."
Since Alienware began pre-installing Steam on systems four years ago, Alienware has had the unique opportunity to work closely with Valve on multiple fronts.
“We have been working with Alienware since we began defining our vision of the Steam Machine. Alienware’s historic commitment to gaming, their design and engineering capabilities and their global reach made them an ideal partner for us on our Steam Machine project,” said Gabe Newell, Founder of Valve. “The result of our collaboration is the Alienware Steam Machine, a console that encapsulates the full potential of what a Steam Machine should be.”