I don't think Valve will be crying themselves to sleep if you buy a $50 dollar streaming box and a $50 dollar controller, and then continue to buy games on their service, instead of spending an extra $300 dollars (which will mostly go to the people producing the hardware) to get a system that's less reliant on your internal wifi.
Either way it's a beachhead for them in the living room, and as computing devices become smaller, and cheaper over time, (and Linux game support increases) they're better and better positioned.
I'm kind of adjacent to the demographic for this thing. I don't have a high-end gaming PC, but I have Steam installed on my Mac laptop (Mac and Linux support are basically the same in Steam) for mostly indie/classic/old games. Notably, you can't stream Steam games from the Mac currently (though I don't think there's a fundamental technical reason for that, edit: hmm, the info page seems to suggest I can stream games if I update to Yosemite).
If I didn't already have a Wii U for living room gaming, I'd probably buy one of these boxes. I might still, depending on how useful the hardware is for other purposes.
Either way it's a beachhead for them in the living room, and as computing devices become smaller, and cheaper over time, (and Linux game support increases) they're better and better positioned.
I'm kind of adjacent to the demographic for this thing. I don't have a high-end gaming PC, but I have Steam installed on my Mac laptop (Mac and Linux support are basically the same in Steam) for mostly indie/classic/old games. Notably, you can't stream Steam games from the Mac currently (though I don't think there's a fundamental technical reason for that, edit: hmm, the info page seems to suggest I can stream games if I update to Yosemite).
If I didn't already have a Wii U for living room gaming, I'd probably buy one of these boxes. I might still, depending on how useful the hardware is for other purposes.