I don't know how to feel about these things.
On the one hand they do seem pretty handy and will probably end a lot of "Is this a good PC build for gaming?" threads (not that I mind those!), but on the other hand I strongly believe that building a PC is not in any way complicated, is a valuable learning experience and will result in something far more versatile than this. The problem is people almost always ignore this advice because, well, I don't know why but the point is now at least they'll be saved from buying some other crappy prebuilt PC with a weak graphics card that will just be horrible for them.
And who knows, maybe they'll get the PC gaming bug and build a 'real' PC.
File under 'nice idea, shame about the target market'.
I think "nice idea, shame about the timing" would be more apt. This is clearly their take on the 'Steam Machine' (or was it Steam Box? I forget, the buzz died down pretty quick) concept, but one of the provisions of the Steam living room hardware and software was that there would be certain standards, kind of like a 'low, medium, high' thing with a list of parts that qualify for these levels. That would then mean developers could have pre-set, auto-detected performance profiles so in theory a player could download and run a game and it'd automatically detect what level of performance the Steam Machine qualified for and they'd be away playing. Many games already auto-detect performance, actually, but they're a bit hit and miss; some games think I should run at the minimum settings because they pre-date my graphics card by a good seven or eight years.
But anyway, for the above to ever really take shape someone has to be too early to market, I guess, since they
are the market for the moment. Either they'll bomb and people will reconsider this Steam Machine idea until Valve provide a more defined framework (kind of like how OnLive bombed because not enough people had adequate internet connections, but now Sony have the remote play function between PS4 and Vita, Nvidia have the Shield streaming feature and I'm sure many other competing services will pop up in the years to come), or they'll take off and developers will see and support them as a third platform between PC and console. As of right now, though, it's too early to say.
