We live in interesting times when it concerns video games. If we quickly re-cap the history of the computer game industry, for now ignoring the consoles, we get the following. First video games where made by "smaller" companies. The budget per game where usually in the thousands of dollars. The games where cheap, usually around 10-20 dollars, but the games where usually not that great. Piracy accounted for perhaps 80% of all played games.
Enter the Amiga and IBM PC gaming. Budgets got bigger, games got expensive, around 50 dollars per game. Piracy still accounted for most of the consumed games. We started the get "bigger" titles, games that made a lot of money. From there the gaming industry had a bit of a Hollywood effect, the bigger games got bigger, and the smaller ones became throw away stuff. Badly coded and bad ideas, usually tied to a movie license or something similar.
Enter Steam. This small platform killed piracy in about 5 years. Piracy is not mainly about not wanting to pay, it's about convenience, and Steam was oh so convenient. There are still companies complaining about piracy, but the fact is that most people I know spend more money on games than they can afford, myself included. You can't reduce piracy without reducing consumption, you will not make more money than you do today as an industry.
Now the console and PC gaming scene is starting to merge, producing games that match big budget films in profit, production costs and people involved in the project. Some of these games are even quite good, but they are mass market stuff, aimed at the lowest common denominator. There are very few new ideas these days, except in the indie scene.
We now have an emerging indie game industry. People with small companies, 1-10 developers, and brilliant game ideas. This is not mass market stuff, this is people who love what they do. And this is possible to a large part because of Valve. The fact that Steam will carry any game that people want to buy, even if the developer is one person, working from a garage, is what makes it so great. Indie game usually have a price tag that is small enough that you can buy it just in case you want to play it someday.
And this was a long-winded lead-up to exactly why I think SteamOS and SteamMachine is the greatest thing since sliced bread. (Actually it's probably a lot better, I don't mind slicing bread myself.) I have always liked the concept of a game console, something you can have in your living room to play games on "socially". The problem have just been that I really hate console games. They are mostly mindless tunnel runs that don't require any thought. I'm the first to admit that there are exceptions, but I will not spend 600+ dollars for one or two great games. The other part is that I don't like switching inputs on the TV. I'd like to be able to do everything from one box, and there is not a console that comes close to that. I have very specific demands, but not unique. At the moment I use a Raspberry Pi with OpenELEC (an Xbmc distro), and I love it. It can do things that most people haven't even dreamed about, and that are in practice only possible in an open system.
If the SteamMachine and SteamOS really is as open as Gabe is promising, I'm expecting Xbmc or Xbmc like capabilities the be available on it in a few months after launch. Just think that you could finally have the mythical all-capable box in your living room. The one that can use the new Steam controller, your old wiimotes, watch TV from your MythTV back-end, watch your movies and series that you downloaded, stream video from Twit or Rev3 and perhaps even watch your Netflix or Viaplay on. And of course play a lot of games.
I really hope that people invest in this system. It really could be the one that bring living-room entertainment to the next level, a revolution if you will. And Valve, keep this thing totally open. It will be great, and you will make mad bank.