Why I don't care about the Steam Box(es)

So the exciting world of CES has come and gone making most of us have to walk away holding our iPads and tablets over our general genital area to conceal our technological boners. Though one thing left my hard drive floppy and that was the Steam Box, or should I say Steam Boxes since they had 13 of them. I'm sorry I'm using the wrong name, Steam Machines, which is pretty fitting since most of them were not terribly arousing, and felt more like milking machine desperately pumping for cash.

I'm sure I sound brash, and dickish, but that's because I am. I was in fact one of the people hoping for the second coming to come free me from the tyrannical rule of Microsoft, and Sony, but to put it simply that isn't happening. I'm not trying to say that none of the machines are impressive, because some extremely impressive, and so are their price tags. I'm talking two or three times what you would spend on a XBone or PS4, the priciest being the Tiki by Falcon Northwest at $6,000. The rest are nice enough except for the fact that they still cost as much of the standard console, and if you already own a decent gaming PC there is nothing absolutely pulling you to buy one.

I could go on and talk about specs but there's enough places that you can already find that, additionally damn near everyone of them has the same specs anyways. What I really want to talk about is the cumulative sigh of disappointment that I, and I think several other people had. I know some people are getting the pitchforks, and torches ready, but relax I'm not trying to crap on Steam itself, because frankly the number of  money dollars of mine that they have at this point is impressive. I would've been more than willing to give more of my money dollars in order to get an awesome Steam Machine too, but I don't really see one. Maybe that's because the herd needs to be thinned out first.

The truth is that this is only an electronics show, and not the final market, and whether or not these consoles find a permanent home is still up in the air to me. In the end I really felt like all I saw was a bunch of mid-range to suped-up gaming PCs, and anyone willing to spend that kind of money is likely more keen on building their own, but that's just my opinion.

As a side note - look at the Piston. It's not a Steam Machine, but it could be, though it is still pretty pricey.