As the console wars settle into a familiar holding pattern with developers trying to figure out what the market wants and how to adopt the technology they’ve been given to match it, a new challenger has started to emerge over the horizon.

That’s the Steam Box or Steam Machine. These console-sized machines take the availability of the videogame supermarket that is Steam and allow those who don’t want a big bulky gaming PC tower taking over their room the same access.

Alienware is one of the first cabs off the rank with its Alpha unit.

Steam Boxes are going to crop up more and more in the coming year, as Valve finalizes its own version. Alienware has taken an ambitious leap of faith to try and get into the market, spectacularly early, but it’s one which could easily pay off.

The Alpha comes with a fair amount of outside accessibility – a generous amount of USB ports allow you to use wireless keyboard and mouse and whack it into PC mode, and while I haven’t tried it, you should conceivably be able to use external hard drives and USBs for save files and the like – and probably even a solid state drive. Not that you will need it – the base model comes with a generous 500GB hard drive, all the way up to 2TB on the top-of-the-line i7.

The Alienware Alpha undoubtedly profits from its relationship with Dell – a phrase which would have PC gamers pulling their hair out – as it allows the box to come direct with a good specs including the i7 processor in its main guise. To build the same device yourself would be expensive, and you’d be unlikely to come out of it with something as tiny – it is slightly bigger than the box most smartphones are sold in these days. And the RAM and CPU are upgradeable in future as well.

The biggest barrier for the Alpha will be its price. The cheapest, the i3, has an RRP of $799 – all the way up to $1,399 for the daddy mack i7. Those prices are prohibitive enough that console gamers will stick with their Xboxes and PlayStations for cheaper, and PC gamers will just build a new rig for a similar price.

But the Alpha should also be looked at with a long-term lens. Because outside circles who already use Steam extensively (and are likely to have a PC built for it), there may not be much demand at the moment. Console gamers may not see the attraction. Yet it’s not impossible to see them becoming vogue in the future, and the Alpha could well be at the cheap end of the spectrum.

While the library available to the Alpha (due to it running controller-only games) is limited, many of the same games already offered on console are available for Steam box console play, as well as a treasure trove of indie games. They do offer a lot more range over their traditional console competitors. Titles like Far Cry, GRID Autosport, even 2K’s NBA games are available.

The only thing they are lacking is a port of one of the big-name steam games – it shouldn’t be too out of the realm of possibility for something like Team Fortress, Arma or DayZ to make the jump to controller port – heck in the 2000’s CounterStrike even came out with an ill-fated console port.

Check out here to see which games are supported by the controller-only boxes at present.

Or there’s the possibility someone like EA, which offers its Battlefield series across computer and console, offer it up in controller mode and make a decent land-grab in the emerging market. Say what you will about EA’s business practices, they are always one of the first to move in on new consoles in the gaming sector.

As the ever-vague launch of Valve’s controller and Steam box gets closer, expect more and more of those high-class titles to also get controller ports. At present competition is scarce and Valve isn’t exactly pushing the domain, but as they get closer to their launch they’ll want a massive publicity blitz – so some or all of those games I just mentioned may make the jump as well.

So the Alienware Alpha is an extremely attractive option for those who want to be prepared for the change. Being a lifelong console gamer I had originally looked at these consoles with scepticism – what is the point, why not just buy a PC?

But it’s quiet, tiny, doesn’t need me to have storage space for disks and can double as a PC. It is a brilliant investment – and the biggest testament to that is that my Xbox One hasn’t been used for 10 days now.

Alienware Alpha i3

RRP $799
4th Generation Intel® Core™ i3 Processor
Windows 8.1
4GB Memory
500GB Hard Drive
Graphics powered by a custom-built NVIDIA® GeForce® GPU 2GB GDDR5
Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160 1x1 + Bluetooth 4.0
External Chassis Connections
2x USB 2.0 (Front)
2x USB 3.0 (Back)
1x RJ45 GbE
1x HDMI-Out 1.4a
1x HDMI-In
1x optical audio out (Toslink)
1x DC in

Internal Chassis Connections

1x USB 2.0 – Tool-less access via bottom door

Alienware Alpha i7
RRP $1399

4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processor
Windows 8.1
8GB Memory
2TB Hard Drive
Graphics powered by a custom-built NVIDIA® GeForce® GPU 2GB GDDR5
Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265 2x2 + Bluetooth 4.0
External Chassis Connections
2x USB 2.0 (Front)
2x USB 3.0 (Back)
1x RJ45 GbE
1x HDMI-Out 1.4a
1x HDMI-In
1x optical audio out (Toslink)
1x DC in