http://www.maximumpc.com/cyberpowerpc_announces_steam_machine_configurations_starting_499
I’m excited and these are a step in the right direction however the performance is going to put a lot of people off.
Many games now are console first and PC ports later. Up until 4-5 years ago just about every game was built on the PC platform and then ported to run on consoles.
Now most companies develope for the consoles and almost rush a PC port. Proof can be seen in many games where menu systems still flash the layout for controllers, dont offer any real key binding customization, lack of graphics options etc…
With consoles you have 1 set piece of hardware to work with and you can build your entire engine around it and being optimzed for it. WIth PC’s even if your PC is capeable of performance far greather than that of a console a game may run like shit because it was not optimized for the hardware you have. It sometimes takes months after release for patches to fix problems like these that people complain about.
Without Valve talking to game developers and setting a standard for “recommended” equipment that developers have optimized the performance versus looks factor is going to be a huge game of give and take, and to get the solid performance console games get from their consoles on a pc is goign to make for some games that just dont look as good or play as smooth.
Minimum versus Recommended requirements on PC’s is almost a load of shit at this point, its about hoping you have the right configuration in your PC and in your settings that the game likes, and it can be a struggle to find that.