The Phantom was taking the same approach pretty much. Off the shelf PC parts and digital copies of games. Just interesting to see how much and how little changes in a decade.

Or how different doing the same approach can be with a successful, multibillion dollar company driving it.

Infinium Labs and the Phantom had a lot more wrong going for them than not being a successful, multibillion dollar company.

Remember Penny Arcade's comic? http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/01/23

Are we talking about the Steambox or the Xbox?

Xbox One has unified memory with the GPU, which you can't get on PC (aside from via integrated intel graphics).

Until next year when AMD releases the same APU technology in a single dye, with granted 4 instead of 8 cores. It will also have HSA, which I believe the Xbox lacks.

Xbox (2001) was pretty much a PC.

The first Xbox also had unified memory. If it was that similar to a PC, you'd expect there to be several good Xbox emulators around.

No, you wouldn't. There aren't even PC emulators that include 3d graphics, only emulators that provide graphics card passthrough or provide software to install inside the emulator to pass high-level graphics commands to the host's OpenGL implementation. Nobody has a binary-compatible GeForce (or Radeon) emulator.

The unified memory enabled developers to practically start using the GPU for things other than rendering. This in turn places higher requirements on an emulator.

None of the emulators you see today existed before someone sat down and started writing them. Your point about PC emulators is irrelevant since if you control the guest OS, it's just much more practical to install a pass-through driver.

I remember going to E3 some ten years ago with friends and we couldn't stop laughing at the Phantom. IIRC, they were either going to charge per minute played or the games were going to be rent-only or something of that nature. It just seemed more like "how can we possibly exploit more money from players" versus Steam's idea of changing the way we do gaming. So I would personally argue that Steam is significantly different.

Aren't games on Steam pretty much "rent-only"? Considering your don't own them in a sense that you are not able to use them without your Steam account.

With Steam at least you only pay once (and FYI some Steam games don't have any DRM but they are a minority). I'd have to dig but the impression that is in my memory is that you would get a game for a time period for a price and then pay again if you wanted to play again. I could be remembering completely wrong here though, I just don't recall the idea of "pay once, play until we go out of business".

Steam is a pay-once indefinite rental, the same as any other software that is sold with fine print that disclaims first-sale rights with the excuse that it's only a license, not a sale. This is very different from a fixed-term renewable rental.

How is that any different from Xbox One? Buy a disc off the shelf, get caught swearing online, get banned from Xbox Live and lose everything!

Far as I know, nobody was banned from Steam for swearing online.

In searching old articles, I can't confirm the "rent-only" stigma in my mind. However, it does appear that you would be forced to pay the $30/mo fee to do anything.

An "alternative" gaming console probably just sparked a memory, that's all. No harm in a little retro nostalgia.