A bit of expected news out of Valve hit this week, as they revealed the release date for the first round of Steam Machines, Steam Link and the Steam Controller.
The actual date for all these items is a bit of an oddity. Valve says each of the first Steam Machines, the Steam Link and the controller will be available in limited quantities to those who preorder on October 16th, but it’ll be November 10th before they actually hit store shelves.
In case you’re unfamiliar, Steam Machines are basically computers crammed inside console-esque cases running the Linux-based SteamOS, and are also capable of streaming games from other PCs with Steam installed. Since Linux support is required for games to run on these machines, only about 1,000 to 1,200 games will be supported at launch, but Valve is continuing to add more. Right now, only Cyberpower and Alienware have announced their machines for launch, but more may follow in the coming days.
Steam Link is a small box about the size of a smart phone that’s meant for streaming games from your normal PC to a different monitor or TV. It’ll retail for somewhere in the $49/€54/£39 range, which is the same price the Steam controller is set to sell at. If you’d like to know more about the controller itself, Valve made a quick new video to show it off.
gazzagb
I’m quite interested in the Link and Controller, but I’ll definitely wait a few months after its out to see how it performs.
Matt Wingler
Same. Really want that controller but I’ll wait on the streaming box to see what kind of latency we’re really talking about.
bunimomike
The thing that impresses me is the bottom shoulder/trigger buttons. I still don’t get along with covering all four shoulder buttons at once.
Transitioning Peasant
I recently picked up an Alienware Alpha (the first batch of these Steam machines) and I love it.
£550 for the i5 model gets you a very competent machine, capable of running the latest releases at mid-high settings 1080p/60fps.
The only upgrade I made was I swapped out the sluggish 5400rpm hard drive with a 120GB SSD but this was by no means essential.