Alienware Steam Machines can be upgraded!

Yesterday, I said that Alienware seems to have missed the point of steam Machines, by closing theirs – not allowing them to be upgraded. Some pretty good points were made about the the machine’s target market not being the sort who’d want to upgrade (ie: console users who want to play PC games). the whole discussions moot now though, as Alienware’s now said they will be upgradeable. Though you may not want to. Cos you’ll need tiny little hands.

"Enabling customers the opportunity to upgrade components has been a core tenet for Alienware since the company was founded, and that remains true today," Alienware boss Frank Azor told Eurogamer, contradicting his earlier statements.

"The Alienware Steam Machine, announced at CES, is designed to deliver a great gaming experience in the living room and we will enable customers to upgrade components. Considering we’ve purposefully designed the Alienware Steam Machine to be smaller than the latest generation consoles, upgrading the internal components will not be as easy as compared to other platforms, such as the Alienware X51, but we will not prevent a customer from upgrading."

I’m very keen on seeing the sort of benefits SteamOS, and its lower-level hardware access can bring, and I’m definitely interested in playing with that bizarre controller, but I’m not the sort to pay a premium for a steam Machine…I’d much rather just build my own.

Previously, Azor explicitly stated that "there will be no customisation options, you can’t really update it." Entry-level Steam Machines will cost roughly what you’d pay for one of the new consoles, though higher-specced ones will cost a whole bunch more.  Alienware has confirmed it’ll refresh its models annually. I still think that the idea of having the best of consoles plus the best of PC is a great one, but it’s starting to look like these machines have nothing but the drawbacks of each.

Last Updated: January 23, 2014