Xbox’s Marc Whitten “Not Sweating” Over Steam Machines

A few days ago we reported that Gabe Newell did not seem overly impressed with Microsoft’s Xbox One sales figures, which was actually pretty impressive at 3 million units to date. Newell’s logic was that Steam had over 65 million users, so what’s 3 million, right? By that logic, it would seem that companies like Microsoft and Sony would have plenty to worry about, but as it turns out Xbox Chief Product Officer, Marc Whitten, does not seem overly concerned himself either. Speaking with Engadget during CES 2014, Whitten stated that he believed there was space for more than one console in the market, and that he was “not sweating” about it, although Whitten did admit that he wasn’t too sure what to make of Valve’s Steam Machines just yet.

According to Whitten, “I’m not knocking it or whatever. I continue to think that PC gaming – the sort of uber configuration and I can change everything and I can mod – that’s an important thing and there’s a lot of people that wanna do that.” However when it comes to the living room, Whitten believes the priorities of gamers change and they just want to launch into a game straight away.“When you get into that living room environment, you don’t want to spend any of your brain cells doing anything but being entertained.” It is true that PC gaming does differ compared to console gaming, but with Steam Machines coming in 13 different options and an entire library of games, we guess we will have to wait and see how well it fares against traditional consoles.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gaming
Tags: Steam Machines, Xbox