The Steam Machine is going to sit in an odd place when it arrives. It’s technically a PC, but shaped and presented like a console, which is obviously the whole point. But it differs from most traditional consoles in that it won’t be coming with any games exclusive to the hardware. That’s because for Valve, they want the Steam Machine to be as open as possible.
Speaking to Bloomberg in a recent interview, Valve engineer Yazan Aldehayyat said that the company wants “it to still be viable for other hardware manufacturers to offer things like the Steam Machine either with higher performance or a different feature set.” As Bloomberg notes, more people with PC hardware ultimately benefits Valve, as it means more people buying games through Steam.
Fellow Valve engineer Loup Griffais also touched on how growing the PC ecosystem is just broadly beneficial to everyone, explaining that the team looks at it “from a long-term perspective. Someone that is creating one of those PCs might actually create some meaningful innovation that is really important for things to come on PC that becomes so universal and brings the experience forward by that much that now the experience is better for everyone and then people might buy more games.”
As mentioned, there’s no plans for a Steam Machine exclusive, despite the infinitely spawning rumours about a new Half-Life that seem to crop up at least once a month. As Griffais explains it, “Restricting where people can play a game I don’t think is a great model, at least for us. We’re much more interested in having the whole PC catalog as our ‘launch exclusive.'” It’s perhaps a bit of an odd way to view it, though I suppose anyone that’s new to PC gaming will have access to a lot more games than they would on a console (even if it’s probably a safe bet that most orders of the thing are from enthusiasts right now).
Oh, and in case you were wondering, it doesn’t sound like pricing will get any better, as Aldehayyat also made a note that things are “getting worse,” continuing on to say, “What people are seeing on retail shelves right now, from our observations, is lagging what we’re seeing from a bulk supply by at least three to six months.” Hurray! I’m sure everyone will be so pleased that they’ll need to spend four figures just to play video games in their living room potentially forever.
