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Valve's 'Steam Box' revealed as Xi3 Piston
by Alice O'Connor, Jan 08, 2013 6:15am PSTFor yonks, rumours have buzzed about Valve selling its own pre-built PC, fondly nicknamed the 'Steam Box' by fans. Yesterday Valve and Xi3 announced that the Half-Life creator and Steam mastermind had invested in the fledgling hardware company, and that the pair are working on a mini-PC aimed at living rooms with the codename 'Piston.'
The Piston is a diddy little PC intended to plug into your living room screen and run games in Steam's Big Picture mode. Xi3's thing is modular computers which you can upgrade by switching modules out, looking far less intimidating than upgrading a big desktop box. The company hasn't revealed Piston's specs yet, but told Polygon it's based on its X7A model.
Starting at around $1,000, the X7A packs a Quad-Core processor with 384-core integrated graphics, which I'd haphazardly guess is AMD's A10 series. It boasts 4GB or 8GB of RAM, oodles of USB ports, and four eSATAp ports for extra external storage. Now, Piston's specs and price won't necessarily line up, but this gives a fair idea of what to expect.
Xi3 attempted to Kickstart its boxes in 2012, but fell far short of the $250,000 crowd-funding goal. Exactly how much Valve invested in Xi3 and what it gets in return is unknown.
Valve head honcho Gabe Newell commented in December that bringing Steam to Linux would be a boon for its then-still-not-officially-announced living room PCs, so Linux should be an option. "Certainly our hardware will be a very controlled environment," he said at the time. "If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC." Yep, that's the X7A all right.
So, Valve has the best PC digital distribution platform, which looks grand on televisions, and now a shiny little PC to sit in your living room. Interesting times ahead for PC gaming.
Here's a video from October, looking at Xi3's modular hardware:
[Story image snapped by Polygon, which has more photos too.]
Comments
For yonks, rumours have buzzed about Valve selling its own pre-built PC, fondly nicknamed the 'Steam Box' by fans. Yesterday Valve and Xi3 announced that the Half-Life creator and Steam mastermind had invested in the fledgling hardware company, and that the pair are working on a mini-PC aimed at living rooms with the codename 'Piston.'
For yonks, rumours have buzzed about Valve selling its own pre-built PC, fondly nicknamed the 'Steam Box' by fans. Yesterday Valve and Xi3 announced that the Half-Life creator and Steam mastermind had invested in the fledgling hardware company, and that the pair are working on a mini-PC aimed at living rooms with the codename 'Piston.' : Shacknews
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http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=21336405
Very small enclosure, quad core Intel CPU, 8 gigs of ram, 500 gig HD, and a nvidia GTX 660 graphics card. The only thing you can complain about on this is no SSD.
This Xi3 Piston is not the PC Valve is bringing to market. No way in hell. Valve would not collaborate with Nvidia on optimizing drivers and engine performance on Linux then end up using entirely different hardware. Makes ZERO sense.
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