I agree that right now they are pretty useless. The Linux thing is going to be a hindrance to widespread adoption.
And I actually think what will happen is we get this huge amount of activity around it right now but once customers actually buy them and realise most of the games they already play don't work that it will severely tarnish the image of steamboxes and then the current what is it 10 steambox producers will quickly dwindle to zero.
I think the best way to look at Steambox is to look at Windows Phone. There are a lot of similarities between these two products. They both launched later than their rivals (XBOX, PS3 / iOS, Android) and they both lack as many software titles as their competition.
Now look at where Windows Phone is, Microsoft has spent something like 10 Billion dollars on this. They are nowhere near to making a profit, any other company would have called it quits, if the same situation happens with Valve they will kill the project they won't waste millions or billions of dollars on something that will never see profitability.
I do think their biggest mistake here is going Linux. It's sad really because I think a console in your living room that you can build out of spare parts or buy with killer graphics would be right up my street but this is not going to see wide adoption with no big name titles from 3rd party developers.
So in my opinion it's a waste of space right now. Maybe if they had come out with a $99 stream-only version that just literally streamed game play from your Windows Desktop, that would have killed and they could have got adoption for their controller built in to many games quickly and easily. And I also think had they gone Windows instead of Linux they could have sold $499-$2,999 consoles but Linux just.. it's not to going work.
I want to make clear though I do love the concept, I do want a steambox, I'm not a Linux hater I use it every day it's a great platform I just don't foresee their vision coming to fruition.
