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There won’t be hardware or software lock preventing the upgrading of Alienware’s Steam Machine.
That’s not to say, however, that doing so is going to be either easy or recommended.
"Enabling customers the opportunity to upgrade components has been a core tenet for Alienware since the company was founded, and that remains true today," boss Frank Azor told Eurogamer.
"The Alienware Steam Machine, announced at CES, is designed to deliver a great gaming experience in the living room and we will enable customers to upgrade components. Considering we’ve purposefully designed the Alienware Steam Machine to be smaller than the latest generation consoles, upgrading the internal components will not be as easy as compared to other platforms, such as the Alienware X51, but we will not prevent a customer from upgrading."
The comments partly conflict with reports from earlier in the week claiming that machine would be physically locked to prevent the changing of components.
However, the nature of the unit’s design will mean that any potential upgrades will be incredibly tricky. Those who want a machine that can be upgraded over time will be far better off getting a conventional PC and simply installing Valve’s free SteamOS.
