What is the point of the Steambox?

Lots of people are excited for Valve’s Steambox. We know it’s coming and we know what it’s basically going to be, a small portable linux gaming PC for around $100. It will boot into Steam and be able to play all Steam games and apps, but that’s it.

Now, this is a great idea, the Xbox and PS3 already have higher price points for mostly the same games though there are some major exceptions such as Halo, Madden, and other exclusives. The PS4 and next Xbox will be even higher priced so the concept of a $100 gaming PC that has access to all of Steam is a pretty amazing concept. There are obviously a lot of games not available on Steam, but they are not available on Xbox, Playstation or Wii either.

I could easily see newcomers to gaming, and also people looking to get a new console easily choosing the Steambox over the PS4 or next Xbox. And thats a great thing. But theres one underlying point. What exactly is the point of the Steambox?

The Steambox is a Steam console, now thanks to Steam it won’t be anywhere near as locked down as the Xbox and Playstation. It has mod support with the Steam Workshop and great indie support as well. However, because it’s Steam only, that also puts it at a huge disadvantage against, well, a real PC.

Right off the bat, you can own a single desktop PC for everything. Gaming, entertainment, work, simply everything you’d want to do on a computer. And Windows 8 brings the Windows Store and great mobile apps from iOS and Android to your PC.

Additionally, and the more important thing is that you have access to every single game. With the Steambox, you’ll just have whats on Steam. Now granted seam has an insane amount of games, but lets say GOG.com has a really great sale on a game you want, and you go and buy it. On the Steambox you can’t play it, because your locked into just Steam. On your PC, you can play it.

Modding is also another huge staple in PC gaming, but the Steam Workshop only supports a handful of games. And also is NOT the easiest to use system. Here’s a list of a few games that have huge modding communities but no space on Steam Workshop.

-Grand Theft Auto III, Vice CIty, San Andreas, IV
-Torchlight I & II
-Dragon Age Origins & Dragon Age 2
-Mass Effect Series
-The Witcher Series
-Jedi Knight Series
-Star Wars Empire at War
-Command and Conquer Series
-Elder Scrolls Series, other than Skyrim (Skyrim Nexus has more mods than Steam)
-Fallout 3 and New Vegas
-Unreal Tournament Series

So right there you have an absolute huge amount of games that have enormous amounts of mods available but on a Steambox no way to get them or install them. Grand Theft Auto IV for example has just as many mods as Skyrim and is much more popular, go search on YouTube if you don’t believe me.

So, lets go over everything again. The Steambox is a great PC console, but it’s just that, a Steam console. A true gaming PC is capable of doing everything the Steambox can, and a lot more, in addition to most likely having much better graphics.

Now I’m not totally saying the Steambox is useless, it does have it’s uses. However, a gaming PC can be bought starting at around $600 and in the long run, at least in my opinion, you’re much better of with a one-box solution. Such is much better than having a cheap PC and a cheap Steambox that can’t even give you the full PC gaming experience; Just the Steam one.