Alienware's Steam Machine to Launch in September?

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By Kevin Parrish
published

September sounds like a good time to launch new consoles.

Last week Alienware revealed its upcoming console-shaped Steam Machine, but didn't reveal what was inside the box other than Intel "Haswell" and Nvidia components, or when we'd see the final product. Now, thanks to the Valve's Steam Dev Days Conference, we have a little more information to chew on.

The company said on Wednesday that its Steam Machine solution likely won't go retail until September. The price is expected to be competitive with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and will perform on the same level as a gaming notebook. The news was revealed by those actually attending the conference. No other "specs" were revealed.

As PC World points out, a September release makes total sense, as SteamOS is in very early beta form; so early that a September dateline feels like the absolute earliest. Plus, Valve needs time to perfect the controller and whatever it plans to do with its own Steam Machine hardware.

Besides, aren't consoles typically launched in the Fall so that companies are cashing in on the holiday season? That's typically where the gold is for Microsoft and Sony, and should be too for the likes of Alienware, Valve and the Steam Machine OEMs.

Speaking of which, Valve handed out a few numbers regarding Steam's continued growth. In the last three months of 2013, the number of active Steam accounts jumped 16 percent to 75 million, up from the 65 million announced back in October 2013. The growth was realized during a busy holiday release season and Steam's Pre-Holiday and Holiday sales, reads a company statement.

On a worldwide scale, Steam's 2013 sales revenue mostly came from North America (41 percent) and Europe (40 percent). Oceania and the Russian Territories were each 5 percent of Steam's 2013 revenue, followed by Asia (3 percent), South America (2 percent), Eastern Europe (2 percent), South East Asia (1 percent), and "other" (1 percent).

Russia and Brazil realized the largest year over year growth (2013 vs. 2012) as individual countries, respectively increasing 128 percent and 75 percent, the company revealed.

Read all about the Steam Machines at CES here.

Kevin Parrish
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9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bustapr
    apart from wanting to release the console close to holidays, Im pretty sure the console/pc is not yet finished. In CES they basically just had the chassis without any of the ports poked out or parts mentioned.
    Reply
  • antemon
    "South East Asia (1 percent)"well I'll be damned. I am the one percent?
    Reply
  • jasonelmore
    Thats a long time to wait. I see no reason to have to wait that long, especially given that this "steam Box", has been in develpment for 5 years according to Alienware (See CES interview Toms did). They are gonna take a page out of Apple's book and build this thing off of laptop parts. Doesn't make sense. Laptop GPU's and CPU's are anywhere from 20% to 50% more expensive because they are cherry picked for low power consumption.
    Reply
  • jasonelmore
    Using laptop parts means you can kiss any notion of upgradablity good bye. the power supply will probably be 250w and use soldiered on Memory, cpu and gpu
    Reply
  • bustapr
    actually judging by the size, Id bet that thing has at least a laptop GPU. having laptop parts actually isnt that bad. All the laptops Ive come across are fully customizable. the reason people find laptops to be unupgradable is because theres a gazillion screws and steps to taking them apart, but laptop cpus, gpus, ram and HDDs are almost always upgradable. and laptop GPUs use much less power than discrete counterparts. Itll make much sense to build this with laptop parts. But indeed, price will be steep for the good models.
    Reply
  • breakfastdude
    actually judging by the size, Id bet that thing has at least a laptop GPU. having laptop parts actually isnt that bad. All the laptops Ive come across are fully customizable. the reason people find laptops to be unupgradable is because theres a gazillion screws and steps to taking them apart, but laptop cpus, gpus, ram and HDDs are almost always upgradable. and laptop GPUs use much less power than discrete counterparts. Itll make much sense to build this with laptop parts. But indeed, price will be steep for the good models.
    Not sure where you got your facts, but the only laptops that have upgradeable GPUs are those bulky gaming laptops (not even the alienware m14x has that feature). And that's a miniscule portion of laptops being sold nowadays. And even if you do find a gaming laptop with "upgradeable" GPU, finding a card that will actually work hassle-free (without flashing vBIOS and whatnot) is a task in itself. But I digress. Alienware does have a good record in having fairly-hassle-free GPU upgradeability for their notebooks (m17 and up), but them mobile GPUs do come at a premium.
    Reply
  • jasonpwns
    That's false breakfastdude. Lenovo has a fairly thin laptop with at least one upgradable GPU.
    Reply
  • lmaonade200
    hey now guys, does anyone even have the dimensions on this thing? the article states it will "perform" on the same level as a gaming laptop, no one said anything about laptop parts.it's probably more PR than literal, they said gaming laptop to make it sound top end (because gaming laptops are the top end of laptops), but in reality it's probably just a custom OEM GTX 650 or 645 with a low end i5 or high end i3 stuck in it, that'd make more sense as using laptop parts won't allow them to price them competitively against the consoles
    Reply
  • XM Keeper
    Let me guess...It will have an intel i7, 32GB of RAM..And the GPU will be a GT 450.
    Reply