Following the unveiling of the very first Steam Machine by iBuyPower, the company has today followed on the announcement by releasing specifications for the new gaming hardware and a price of $499 which puts it in direct competition with the current next-generation gaming consoles.
The new Steam Machine will be showcased at next years CES 2014 event and is expected to go on sale sometime later in the year for $499.
Specifications for the new Steam Machine includes a multicore AMD CPU and a discrete AMD Radeon R9 270 graphics card all running Valve’s Linux-based Steam OS and bundled with Valve’s Steam Controller which was unveiled earlier in the year.
Other features of the iBuyPower Steam Machine include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity as well as a 500GB hard drive. iBuyPower has explained that their new Steam Machine games system is bigger than Sony’s PlayStation 4 but smaller than Microsoft’s Xbox One.
Unfortunately no information on worldwide availability has been released as yet, but as soon as information comes to light we will keep you updated as always. Valve explains a little more about their new Steam OS based on Linux:
“Valve SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen. It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.
In Valve SteamOS, we have achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing, and we’re now targeting audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level. Game developers are already taking advantage of these gains as they target SteamOS for their new releases.”
Source: Destructoid