The Steam Machine is a peculiar device. Ever since it was announced, we in the PC Gamer hardware lair have been discussing exactly what the target market is and who will get the most use out of it. And while that question looms in part because of the gaming PC's as-yet unknown price tag, it's because of its middling specs. On that front, Valve explains that the company's upcoming machine is actually "equal or better" than 70% of Steam gamers' systems.
Talking on YouTube channel Adam Savage's Tested, a Valve engineer said, "Another thing that we actually looked at is the Steam Hardware Survey. Basically, that just gives us a good benchmark of where people's home devices are at, in terms of performance. And the Steam Machine is equal or better than 70% of what people have at home. So that's also another way to, kind of, think about where we kind of arrived at that performance level [that they targeted]" (via Notebookcheck).
