Alienware has revealed that it won’t let its customers upgrade Steam Machines and rather than offering user modability, the company will be updating its Steam Machines every year – something that hasn’t gone well with Alienware fans.
Valve garnered a lot of attention earlier this month after it showed off a range of Steam Machines vendors will be launching later this year – Alienware being one of them.
The idea of a Steam Machine is to have a top-of-the line console system with benefits of a PC that has a dedicated gaming operating system providing developers with low level access to hardware, while giving its customers the option of an open systems that can be modded and upgraded as per their will. However, it seems that folks over at Alienware were looking the other way when Valve was marketing Steam Machine.
Alienware general manager Frank Azor has explained how the company is looking at its Steam Machines and the options with which it will release the console. First and foremost, the company has outright denied that users will not have the option of upgrading their Alienware Steam Machine – meaning that they will not be user moddable.
“There will be some configuration options when you purchase it, maybe you can get a faster CPU, maybe some more memory something like that,” Azor said in an interview with Trusted Reviews.
But, it is a big no no when it comes to customisation option! “There will be no customisation options, you can’t really update it”, added Azor.
Secondly the company will be cutting short the lifecycle of its Steam Machine to just one year contrasting the lifecycle of other gaming consoles of 5-7 years. “Lifecycle wise, consoles update every five, six, seven years, we will be updating our Steam Machines every year,” Azor said.
Here comes the home run! Azor said that if users want to still tinker around, they are better off buying a standard PC.
“If you actually want to customise your Alienware Steam Machine, maybe change your graphics card out or put in a new CPU, you would be better off with the standard Alienware X51,” he said.
