History Steam, a digital video games storefront offering many third-party
game publishers' titles, was developed by
Valve primarily for
Windows and accounted for an estimated 75% of digitally purchased games on that platform in 2013. Valve has indicated displeasure with the approaches that both Microsoft and Apple are taking with their respective operating systems, limiting what applications could be run, and upon the release of
Windows 8 in 2012, Valve's CEO
Gabe Newell called it "a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space", and discussed the possibility of promoting the open-source operating system
Linux that would maintain "the openness of the platform". Newell recognized that games would need to be a significant part of the push for Linux. Valve worked to assure that users' game libraries would be portable, including offering Steam Play whereby purchase of a title for one platform automatically allows that user to play the title on other supported platforms, and cross-platform multiplayer features. Prior to Valve's official announcement of Steam Machines, rumors of Valve's plan to get into the hardware market developed in the industry throughout 2012, based on aspects such as the emphasis on the Linux operating system and the introduction of features like the
10-foot user interface "Big Picture Mode" for Steam which would be a necessary feature for a video game console. Valve formally announced that it was considering developing a
video game console near the end of 2012. Industry journalists tentatively called the hardware a "Steam Box". It would function as a dedicated unit running Steam to allow players to launch games, media, and other functions that the client already provides. The unit's hardware was expected to be tightly controlled in a similar manner to other video game consoles. The software side was expected to remain open; for example, the unit was expected to ship with a Linux operating system, but the user would be able to install Windows if they wanted to. Gabe Newell explained that Valve's strategy was to develop a single hardware unit themselves as the default model, internally named "Bigfoot", and work with other computer manufacturers who want to offer the same user experience but with different hardware configurations not offered by Valve's model; for example, Valve did not expect to include an optical drive due to size and cost, but this could have been a feature offered by a manufacturing partner. He also envisioned the software to enable
screencast capabilities, allowing the single box to work with any monitor or television within the home. At the 2013
Consumer Electronics Show,
modular computer hardware company Xi3 Corporation introduced a prototype modular PC codenamed "Piston". This unit was one of several possible designs that Valve was looking as the default hardware model for the Steam Box, and was specifically designed to run Steam on Linux and support Big Picture mode. The unit was based on Xi3's "performance level" X7A model and was slightly larger than a human hand, containing various I/O ports to connect to power, video, and data signals. Xi3 began taking pre-orders for the Piston Console at the 2013
South by Southwest Festival in March 2013, anticipating high levels of interest in the hardware with plans to release the unit for general purchase by the end of 2013. Valve clarified that although they conducted some initial exploratory work with Xi3, they have had no direct involvement with the Piston's specifications, and it was not necessarily representative of the final design for the Steam Box. Valve officially revealed Steam Machines including the related
SteamOS and Steam Controller during the last week of September 2013, with a tentative release date in mid-2014. On December 13, 2013, three hundred beta units of the Steam Machine were shipped to selected beta testers for initial testing. An additional 2000 units were provided to developers attending the Steam Dev Days event in January 2014. Valve also released an early restricted download link for their SteamOS for "Linux hackers" to try out. Based on feedback from these testers, Valve announced in May 2014 that they have pushed back the anticipated release until November 2015. The first set of Steam Machines, Steam Controllers, and Steam Links were available for consumer purchase and delivery starting on November 10, 2015. Several gaming websites observed that by April 2018, Valve no longer offered links to the Steam Machine section on the Steam storefront, and while it could be reached directly via a URL, many of the models previously offered were no longer listed. Valve responded that they recognized that Steam Machines were not selling well and saw little user traffic, prompting them to make the change to the storefront. Valve stated they remained committed to an open gaming platform and will continue to develop the back-end technologies like SteamOS that will help such efforts.
Hardware Unlike gaming consoles, the Steam Machine does not have a specific configuration of hardware, but a minimum specification of computer hardware components that would be needed to support the SteamOS operating system and games developed for it. Valve planned to have several different retail versions of the Steam Machine through various hardware manufacturers, that would also allow users to create their own units from components and or modify retail products with off-the-shelf parts as desired. The units were expected to arrive in 2014, with Valve expecting to announce its partners for this first line at the 2014
Consumer Electronics Show in early January. A core part of the machine configurations was the method of providing ventilation and cooling of the CPU, GPU, and power supply; Valve engineered custom compartments within these beta units so that each of these three units has separate circulation and ventilation routes. Valve also worked with
AMD to develop and certify hardware for future Steam Machines. Valve began running a beta-testing program in late 2013, selecting 300 Steam users to test their optimized prototype hardware units and initial versions of the Steam Controllers. The initial prototypes sent to testers had several configurations, which includes the following: • CPU:
Intel Core i7-4770, i5-4570, or i3 • Graphics card:
Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan, GTX 780, GTX 760, or
GTX 660 with 3 GB
GDDR5 • Main RAM: 16 GB
DDR3-1600 • Hard drive: 1 TB storage/8 GB SSD cache
hybrid drive • Power: 450 W power supply • Measurement: 12" × 12.4" × 2.9" high (30.5 cm × 31.5 cm × 7.4 cm) A
handheld game console version of the Steam Machine was in development as the "SMACH Z", previously dubbed "Smach Zero" or "Steamboy" by analogy to Nintendo's
Game Boy. The SMACH Z was to be released in November 2016 and was to combine a x86 Steam OS architecture based on an AMD G-Series chip with a portable form factor and input elements similar to those of a Steam controller. A
Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign was launched in December 2015, and canceled a few days later with a promise of a restart. A new Kickstarter campaign was launched on October 16, 2016, with a much lower goal, and successfully ended with a total of €474,530 one month later. The processor was to be an
AMD Raven Ridge V1605B, and the release date was to be sometime in April 2017. An InDemand
indiegogo campaign was launched following the end of the Kickstarter campaign. As of 2016 the SMACH Z had not yet been approved by Valve as an official Steam Machine. On May 12, 2021, the Smach team announced they would be filing for bankruptcy, and that units were not likely to be shipped unless they got new investment.
Steam Controller The first generation Steam Controller was released in November 2015. The Steam Controller was designed by Valve not only for games developed for controllers, but also for games traditionally played with keyboard and mouse controls. It features two high-resolution clickable touchpads (replacing the typical thumbsticks on modern console controllers), sixteen buttons, including face, shoulder, and undergrip buttons, and
gyroscopic sensors for motion control. The touchpads include
haptic feedback, which can send tactile feedback to the player in reaction to events within the game; Chris Kohler of
Wired described using the controller while playing
Civilization V at a press event at Valve, and noted that as he used the touchpad to move the mouse cursor, electromagnets within the controller created audio and tactile feedback as if he were using a trackball. Although the controller was designed for the Steam Machine platform, it can also be used with Steam on existing PCs. The controller is designed to be used within Steam's Big Picture mode; this enables the player to access detailed options for setting up the various features of the controller on a per-game basis including button/touchpad mapping and sensitivity, as well as accessing other users' shared controller configuration to use themselves. The Steamworks API provides means for developers to provide more detailed settings for the Steam Controller when in Big Picture mode. Outside of Big Picture mode, the controller otherwise behaves as a standard two-stick controller. Valve has added improvements to the controller's capabilities based on public feedback, which include movement and aiming controls schemes using its internal gyroscope, the ability to trigger actions that enable cursor movement limited to certain regions on a UI (such as to manipulate a game's mini-map), a quick-access popup for 16 commands that can act similar to hotkeys for keyboard-and-mouse games, cloud-based controller configuration saving, and support for non-Steam games that otherwise can be played through the Steam Overlay. Unlike their plan to have third-party hardware vendors manufacture Steam Machines, Valve had planned to be the sole manufacturer of the Steam Controller. Valve did clarify that they would open up specifications for third-party controllers to be developed. In March 2016, Valve released the computer aided design geometry files for the Steam controller, to facilitate hardware
modding by end users. As of December 2015, Valve was working with
Flextronics robotic assembly line in
Buffalo Grove, Illinois to assemble the machines; jokingly, the machines were given
Aperture Science branding, the fictional company from Valve's
Portal series.
Vendor support Selected manufacturers showcased prototype units prior to the 2014 CES show. iBuyPower announced a prototype model, powered by an AMD CPU with a discrete R9-270 GPU and a 500 GB hard drive with a price of $499.
Digital Storm also revealed its higher-end unit utilizing liquid-cooled parts, expected to retail from about $1,500. Other vendors with Steam Machine prototypes include
Alienware,
Falcon Northwest,
CyberPowerPC,
Origin PC,
Gigabyte, Materiel.net, Webhallen, Alternate, Next,
Zotac, Scan Computers, and
Maingear, all of whom, except Maingear, showcased their prototypes at the 2014 CES show. The price range of these first machines ranged from $499 to $6,000 based on vendor and specifications. Alienware announced it would start selling consumer Steam Machines in September. The company planned to offer only fixed hardware units that cannot be modified by the user, but plan on offering new configurations on an annual basis. The initial units, called Alpha, did not initially ship with SteamOS, as the operating system was not ready in time. Owners were able to upgrade their units to SteamOS once it was officially released. On the official release of Steam Machines in November 2015, both Falcon Northwest and Origin PC opted to not ship a SteamOS-enabled machine in 2015 due to limitations of SteamOS over Windows; Falcon Northwest said they would consider shipping machines with SteamOS in the future if performance improved. Valve negotiated deals with retail stores
GameStop,
EB Games and
Game to create Steam Sections within the stores where various Steam Machines, the Steam Controller and Link, and pre-paid Steam cards would be sold.
Reception By June 2016, seven months after the official release, fewer than half a million units had been sold. In response to the sales figures,
Ars Technica described the unit as
dead on arrival. Many vendors discontinued selling Steam Machines by the end of 2016; however, as of 2017, some were still offering them for sale, alongside configurations that could be installed with SteamOS. In March 2020, Newell said "the [Steam Machine] hardware we were pushing for was super-incomplete at the time." Gabe Newell noted that Steam Machines impacted Valve's design for the
Valve Index and
Half-Life: Alyx, which, like the Steam Machine and SteamOS, were intended to be "hardware and software in concert with each other." ==Second generation==