First Three Steam Machines Released, Prices and Specs Detailed

The first run of Steam Machines, a line of computers designed to challenge consoles for space in the living room, have gone on general sale across North America and the UK.

New PC-console hybrids are being offered by three manufacturers: Alienware, Syber, and Zotac. Each comes with Valve's new game controller that is uniquely designed to map keyboard and mouse controls to a handheld pad. Prices start at $450 in North America and £450 in the UK, with certain high-end configurations available at three times that price.

To mark the release of these systems, Valve has started a game sale with discounts as high as 80 percent. Click through the link for the full list of Steam games on sale.

The NEN Steam Machine, by Zotac, ships for $800 (UK price not available) and bundles together an Intel Core i5-6400T, 4 GB of RAM, one terabyte of storage, and comes with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960.

Meanwhile, the Syber Steam Machine is available in numerous configurations, starting at $530 (£500) for a system that comes with an Intel Core i3-4170 processor, a GeForce GTX 950 2 GB GPU, a 1 terabyte hard-drive, and 4 GB of DDR3 memory.

Syber's higher-end Steam Machine fetches for $1450 (£1200) and comes with an i7-4790k CPU, 16 GB of DDR3 RAM, and an Nvidia GTX 980 4 GB graphics card A middle-ground bundle, at $760 (£700) goes for the i5-4460 processor, 8 GB of DDR3, and a GTX 960 2 GB video card.

Alienware is the third manufacturer releasing a line of Steam Machines, with its basic model going for $450 (£450) with an i3, 4 GB of memory, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX graphics card that carries 2GB of GDDR5. The premium model sells for $750 (£700) and comes with an i7 CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX graphics card with 2 GB of GDDR5. There are two tiers of pre-made bundles between these low and high-end versions.

Steam Machines were first rumoured in March 2012, months prior to Valve's official announcement. Each machine varies significantly in price and performance, while all run on SteamOS, a Linux-based operating system (though players can install windows too). A Valve-developed Steam controller has also been built for the devices.

Valve has also created a seperate solution to PC gaming in the living room, with a Wi-Fi-enabled device called Steam Link that transfers video signals from the PC to a nearby television.