Moments ago, Valve showed off and talked about the first generation of Steam Machines coming in 2014 from a variety of manufacturers. Many of these begin for as little as $499 (USD).
he lineup of Steam Machines announced today offers a wide variety of price and performance options made possible by the Steam Machine's open design, with systems starting as low as $499 and top end systems rivaling today's bleeding edge gaming PCs.

Every Steam Machine includes an innovative Steam Controller designed for use with a wide variety of game genres, and is powered by the SteamOS, a custom OS built atop Linux.

"The first generation Steam Machines offers something for every gamer, which is a critical part of extending Steam into the living room," said Gabe Newell of Valve. "With over 3,000 games and more than 65 million gamers on Steam, it's important to offer gamers a variety of Steam Machines that allow them to select what makes the most sense for them."

Announced earlier this year, Steam Machines are new entertainment systems targeted for use in the living room and leveraging Steam, the popular online platform for gaming and software with over 65 million accounts worldwide.

The makers of first generation Steam Machines are:
  • Alienware
  • Alternate
  • CyberPowerPC
  • Digital Storm
  • Falcon NW
  • GigaByte
  • iBuyPower
  • Maingear
  • Materiel.net
  • Next Spa
  • Origin PC
  • Scan
  • Webhallen
  • Zotac

Shacknews has some additional details on the hardware from many of these manufacturers.
  • Alternate ($1339) - Intel Core i5 4570, Gigabyte GTX 760, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSHD
  • CyberpowerPC ($499+) - AMD/Intel Core i5 CPU, AMD Radeon R9 270/Nvidia GTX 760, 8GB RAM, 500GB
  • Digital Storm - Bolt II ($2584) - Intel Core i7 4770K, GTX 780Ti, 16GB RAM, 1TB HDD + 120GB SSD
  • Gigabyte + Brix Pro (TBD) - Intel Core i7-477OR, Intel Iris Pro 5200, 8GB RAM, 1TB SATA
  • Falcon Northwest Tiki ($1799+) - Nvidia GTX Titan, 8+GB RAM, up to 6TB
  • iBuyPower ($499+) - Quad Core AMD or Intel, Radeon GCN graphics, 8GB RAM, 500GB+
  • Materiel.net ($1098) - Intel Core i5 4440, MSi GeForce GTX 760OC, 8GB RAM, 8GB+1TB SSHD
  • Origin PC - Chronos (TBD) - Intel Core i7 4770K 3.9+ GHz, MSI GeForce GTX 760 OC, 8GB RAM, 8GB + 1TB SSHD
  • Next Spa (TBD) Intel Core i5, Nvidia GT 760, 8GB RAM, 1TB
  • Scan - NC10 ($1090) - Intel Core 93 4000M, Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M, 8GB RAM, 500GB
  • Webhallen ($1499) - Intel Core i7 4771, Nvidia GTX 780, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSHD
  • Zotac ($599) - Intel Core, Nvidia GeForce GTX

As you may have already figured out by now, the image for this article is a sneak peak of the Alienware branded Steam Machine as posted on Twitter.