Don't worry. Valve will come out with a nice car (SteamBox) and will craft their message more carefully to make sure all of the horse lovers don't get spooked before they fall in love with the ride.
People calling the XBox 1 a car, not realizing that consoles are the horse and Steam/online digital gaming is the car, since you can buy a functional new gaming computer (laptop!) that can play any modern game for $400 or less, a $499 price point on the XBox makes no sense at all.
It's much easier to just buy a console that will last for 8 years rather than worry about your computer getting out of date in 3 years.
It's easier for groups of friends to play on a console because there is local multiplayer support on console games.
Many gamers want to game on their couch and use their game console for other media (video streaming and music).
People will buy what their friends have (hint: it's consoles)
My "game console" being my pc.
Is it really that hard to run an hdmi cable in 2013?
But they don't let you swap/sell games to other accounts, however there are massive sales multiple times a year where games are actually is cheap (even in terms of Australian pricing, which is crazy) enough for you to buy.
Whereas Microsoft went to the biggest built-up launch event in all of gaming and told all the gamers waiting on the edge of their seat and gave the impression that they cared more about the set-top box market instead and the Xbone was going to lock you out of even disc games that you buy unless you give it a 24/7 phone-home kill switch. Oh and if the cloud thought that your IP address looked like it came from the wrong region you were DoA too.
To be out-consumer-friendlied by Sony of all companies, ouch that stings.
Disclosure: MS employee, not in Xbox, my own opinion only
Could be related to a ruling by the European Court of Justice last year, by which "An author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licences" http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012...
This could also lead to permanent license transfers being possible (possibly enabled via Steam's existng community marketplace, where Steam takes a cut of the sale of virtual goods--and perhaps more advantageous for Steam, sellers on Steam's community market don't get cash; they get credit that can only be used on Steam).
To un-knot the twisted metaphor, I'm saying Valve already got past the wailing 10 years ago. Their Steam model already enjoys widespread success and approval, while Microsoft is, well, Microsoft.