But that controller could make all the difference. Valve's Steam Controller is one piece of the hardware puzzle that Valve's building all by itself, and the company has big plans for the peripheral. As we discovered in November, the Steam Controller is an extremely clever piece of kit that uses dual touchpads, a touchscreen, and haptic feedback to provide an experience nearly as quick and accurate as a mouse and keyboard without requiring you to have a mouse and keyboard on your lap.

When you pair that controller with Alienware's box, it's definitely a compelling vision. Alienware didn't have a working model, but with a computer that Alienware says is representative of the entry-level spec for its Steam Machine — including an undisclosed Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU — we played a few games at full 1080p resolution and high settings and the computer seemed to have plenty of power to spare. With four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI input and output, Gigabit Ethernet and optical audio out, the machine doesn't have the connectivity of a giant desktop, but it has all the ones you'd need to route it into a home entertainment system. It's small and powerful, and — assuming Valve can secure enough games for Linux — it seems like a compelling alternative to a console.

"We consider this to be a PC gaming console."

For now, neither Alienware nor Valve are willing to go that far. "We consider this to be a PC gaming console," says Diana. "We don't see this product as competing against a PlayStation 4 or competing against an Xbox One." For now, both Alienware and Valve say, the idea is just to give existing Steam users a way to get an experience that brings the openness of the PC platform to the living room. Today, a lot of that openness is based in Microsoft's relatively closed Windows ecosystem, but tomorrow things could be different — if boxes like Alienware's show up in homes around the globe.

"It's what we hoped would happen when we began this relationship about a year ago," says Coomer. "This machine is the one that we think is actually going to serve the most customers and make the most Steam users happy."