Steam Box could expand PC landscape, motherboard manufacturer says

Valve's Steam Box could be a way to "expand the PC landscape," MSI associate marketing manager Alex Chang recently told Gaming Blend.

Chang spoke to the publication during a pre-press briefing of MSI's collaboration to outfit the company's gaming motherboard setup with Killer Technology's E2200 Ethernet tech.

"[Steam Box] is kind of expanding the PC landscape in terms of slowly pushing the gap between the average console users that may not ever want to touch a PC versus some of the hardcore PC gamers that will never want to touch a console," Chang said.

Valve is expected to begin distributing Steam Box prototypes within the next three to four months. The company has already announced mini PC manufacturer Xi3 as one of its partners. Xi3 is currently taking pre-orders for the Piston, one of the Steam Box prototypes shown at CES 2013.

"If we can get more users to accept the fact that 'hey you can buy a PC and have incremental upgrades that would have a big impact on gaming performance,'" Chang said, "and if people can actually realize that, then that would expand the PC gaming market by several magnitudes."