Xbox's Marc Whitten 'not sweating' Steam Machines
Xbox Chief Product Officer Marc Whitten isn't worried about Steam Machinestaking up precious Xbox real estate in the living room. During an interview withEngadget at CES, Whitten said he's "not sweating" Valve's new initiative. He thinks "there's space for both."
Whitten admitted, "I personally don't know how to think about Steam Machines yet," which is becoming an increasingly more popular sentiment. "I'm not knocking it or whatever. I continue to think that PC gaming – the sort of uber configuration and I can change everything and I can mod – that's an important thing and there's a lot of people that wanna do that."
Whitten elaborated when a product is in the living room, however, players want to be instantly entertained – they don't want to spend time doing anything else. "When you get into that living room environment, you don't want to spend any of your brain cells doing anything but being entertained. I don't want to work on it; I don't want to feel like I have to know how it works. I would like to be blowing things up now, or watching a thing now. That's the fundamental thing that you want to do."
A total of 13 Steam Machines, from various manufacturers, have been revealed so far. The cheapest machines come in at $500, while the more expensive configurations can top out at $6,000. Each Steam Machine ships with SteamOSand Valve's new Steam Controller.
http://www.joystiq.com/2014/01/10/xb...team-machines/
