How many of those 30 or so million users are looking to upgrade their video card or buy a new computer? That's your target market.

potential markets:

- people looking for a computer to hook up to their television. I bet there are lots of people out their who would like a nice HTPC but want modern gaming performance as well.

- people with laptops as their primary PC but who also game. How many people have a desktop and a laptop because gaming sucks on most/all laptops? Probably the vast majority of PC gamers. Every single one of these is a potential customer. Use a MacBook Air for work & facebook & casual gaming and get a SteamBox for serious RTS gaming or flight simulators or whatever other kind of games don't work well on consoles or on laptops. You'll no longer have to worry about anti-virus or any of the other crap involved in maintaining a Windows box. You'll just have an OS X box that "just works" and you'll have a Linux box that "just works".

- people who want to buy a PC without paying a license fee to Microsoft. Some of these will install Ubuntu or a pirated Windows on their later, but then support is no longer the Vendor's problem. I suspect it will be much easier to persuade vendors to sell "SteamBox OS" boxes than Linux boxes just because it should reduce support costs.

To summarize: cheapskates and gamers. I think that covers about 99% of the home desktop PC market -- everybody else buys laptops.

Just take a look at community sites like NeoGAF where people own Xboxes, PS3s, Wiis, Vitas, PSPs, iPhones, etc., etc.

I'm sure a lot of people don't take it for granted that they will get the next version of any of these except for the iPhone.

I don't know how many people can imagine the Xbox without Halo, and if Valve can line up some companies or their own games, I wouldn't be surprised if they disrupted the industry. There aren't that many flagship franchises for either of the consoles, and just look at how Nintendo basically don't know how to innovate in videogames anymore and end up releasing Zelda 15, Mario 8, and Mario Kart/Party/Tennis/Golf Umpteen as a result. The iPhone is destroying the handheld market, and I'm sure Activision will figure out how to develop Call of Duty for the new console, if it gains traction.

Valve will allow their customers to play their games on Mac, Windows, and their console, if any versions are available, due to the cross-platform presence of Steam - they have basically already done this with Sony. That's new and very alluring, although I have to wonder how they will manage the disk space of the console. Maybe people will have to buy the physical version of the games and use the Steam key to let them download it to their Mac and PC. The prospect of selling your games directly to your customers with no expenditures save bandwidth through Steam might help the platform earn a profit, too.

Everyone is going to be their customer. I imagine this being a standard feature of all TVs in the future. Apple TV is a great idea, but I don't think it will evolve to be a huge market for game developers to target. Steam Box could possibly be 'the' platform on everyone's living room. That's what I read from the article: open platform for hw/sw, standardized specs, standard controller, great content delivery network and easy payment options.. Sounds like success.

Me. Long time Steam user. And, I'll admit up from, Valve fanboy. I'm also a Mac user, and if a Steam box existed, I'd buy it and not look back.

I'm a Steam user and I'd probably buy one. I don't own any consoles, and I don't own a Windows machine. I'm tired of booting from OS X into Windows to play Windows-only titles. I'd much rather have an unobtrusive box in the corner that can play all Steam titles.