CES 2014 kick-started the year for the video gaming industry and what away to usher in this new year with a huge announcement coming from Valve. The game developer was responsible for the likes of Half Life series and Left 4 Dead.
Many fans have been anticipating for Half Life 3 for so long. It just seems like the game is never going to come out. Despite that fact, the fans kept their hopes alive by continuing to believe. With Half Life 3 aside, what else could possibly be bigger and a better announcement?
It appears that Valve is looking to market its upcoming Steam Machines. The game developer revealed that their own version of gaming console will run on the Steam OS. In spite of that, they will be developed by 14 different companies which will offer a competitive price war and specs war among the vendors.
The companies participating are Alienware, Alternate, CyberPowerPC, Digital Storm, Falcon Northwest, GigaByte, iBuyPower, Maingear, Materiel.net, Next Spa, Origin PC, Scan, Webhallen, and Zotac.
Each of them will have a different look and built. It all depends on the consumers in selecting the appropriate Steam Machines for themselves. The console will cost from $499 for the entry level low end by CyberPower PC to $6,000 from Falcon Northwest which is the highest end.
Both low end and high end does have a big difference in their specifications. The low-end CyberPower PC runs on AMD CPU and graphics with 8GB of RAM and 500GB of storage. On the other hand, the Falcon Northwest runs on a deluxe custom rig with 16GB of RAM and 6TB of storage.
The Steam OS is a Linux based application and will serve the machines like a PC. At the moment, Steam has 65 million users. If this number were to run the Steam machines, it will definitely rival the PC, Xbox One and PS4. As for Half Life 3, it can apparently wait.
