The 1300$ model is of course for those who want a status-symbol, i.e. the high price is a feature.
Basically the classic consoles are the printer/toner sales-model: You get the hardware relatively cheap, but you pay through the nose afterwards.
For an open platform that is impossible, so for the Steambox, you have to pay a little bit more for the hardware (i.e. about 500-700$), but you save money on the software.
Surely, there is a place for the printer/toner sales-model, therefore the PS3/XBone have their place - but not everybody likes it that way. (Of course for the brainwashed the fact that different products may use different sales-models is very, very hard to grasp.) So there is place for the open sales-model as well.
But the Steambox has some other advantage: It is also a PC, and you can use it for everything a PC can do:
For example if you use a tablet for EMail/Web and have only moderate PC-use (write Christmas cards once per year, etc.) - and your PC gets old, you may buy a Steambox instead of upgrading the PC. In that case you save money - and space because you can scrap that desk where the PC is sitting on.
So there is definitely a market for the Steambox.