My prediction: this box is going to sell like gangbusters for the parents in the 40-some odd years old range who have kids under the age of 16.

I am one of those people. Could I build my own PC? Yes. But the reality is I just don’t have the time to dedicate to all the fringes of the PC gaming hobby. And space is precious these days as the house fills up with things you want/need for teenagers (including the teenagers themselves who are noticeably larger than when they were 8 years old about 3 weeks ago.

The Steam Deck was amazing in part, and I’ve heard this from multiple parents, because it allowed you to just get to playing your games in a way no PC had before. The Steam Machine offers that same experience but with more power. I won’t be hooking mine up to a TV, that’s already a disaster area owned by the kids. This will hook up to my 1440P HDR monitor in my office. This box will be plenty to power that. It’s tiny, it’s very quiet, and it offers an experience that, while I could hack together on a custom built PC, would be difficult for me to get the time together to do.

I dunno…the older I get, with more time pressures in life, the more I appreciate quality turnkey solutions over DIY. I’ll buy this as soon as I can, and I’m pretty confident that it’s going to deliver an experience that will fit into the “great” to “good enough” category for what I’m looking for, and that’s good enough for me. And I’m willing to be it’ll also be good enough for a lot of other parents in a similar life stage to me.