News Xi3 making Valve's Steam Box? Not exactly

Having my pc in that size would be epic

 

Good article however nothing I've read prior to this made me think that the piston was THE steam box.

I won't lie - I want a steam box bad. It will probably take over the current household duties of my WD TV and my PS3. And it makes me want to massively expand my 100 game steam library... well played Mr. Newell.

 

This still doesn't make sense to me. 2014 for a box to will play Linux AND PC games. So does Newell believe that PC game requirements will level out in the next 12-24months? I know things have got easier in the last couple of years (blame all the ports I guess) but has PC h/w engineering reached a performance plateau? Surely that's the only way a box (or boxes like this) will succeed.

 

You either support your partners or you do it yourself, Gabe, there's no half-way house. What customer would want to buy a 3rd party instead of Valve's own, with Valve's own marketing and premium placement on Steam? Basic business sense states you couldn't compete with that. Yet, Valve doesn't have the hardware distribution network to do sell its own products unless he plans to do co-operative agreements with hardware vendors like Google does with Nexus? That kills the open market and any price competitiveness. Why not make the specs open-source and let anyone meet them, so at least real PC gamers and small-market SI's can then just build their own?