Alienware has been working on its own version of a Steam Machine for some time now and was expecting a stable release of the SteamOS. Now it looks like Valve is going back to the drawing board to make its Steam Machine, and the OS powering it, way better before releasing it. This is why Alienware has decided to swap out the SteamOS for Windows 8.1 but fret not, you’re still getting some Steam love.
The new Alienware Alpha is being called the company’s first console though it is essentially a desktop PC without the monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Since the SteamOS is only coming around next year, Alienware has decided to work instead with Windows 8.1 and Valve’s Steam client. The team had actually built the Alpha around the Steam Big Picture mode to deliver PC games and gaming experience to the living room.
Alienware’s strategy of getting a top notch gaming rig teamed up with the gaming powerhouse that is Steam makes perfect sense. With over 75 million active users and more than 7 millions users at any one time, Steam certainly has some attractive numbers to work with.
The Alienware Alpha is compact and produces low thermal and noise signature. The rig will initially come with an Intel Core i3 processor but you will be able to upgrade that in store to a Core i5 or i7. You can also swap out the original 4 GB of RAM and 500 GB hard drive to 8 GB and 2 TB respectively. Taking over the graphics side would be the NVIDIA Maxwell GPU. The console will come with an Xbox 360 controller but we’re hoping that Alienware will swap this out as well for the ultra-cool Steam Controller. Alienware has even confirmed that its console is SteamOS and Steam Controller ready.
The Alienware Alpha console has a price tag of US$549 (~1755) and will begin shipping by the end of this year to customers in the US. We can only hope that Dell would want to make it available everywhere else as well.
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