Valve distance themselves from the Xi3 Piston, claim “no involvement”
By Tim Colwill on March 13, 2013 at 12:01 pm
The Xi3 Piston modular computer, which we wrote about yesterday, was supposed to be one of the first Steam Boxes — and in fact earlier this year they proudly announced that Valve had invested in them for the creation of such a thing.
Fast forward to March, and things aren’t so certain. Valve’s Doug Lombardi provided a statement to Eurogamer distancing themselves from the box, saying “Valve began some exploratory work with Xi3 last year, but currently has no involvement in any product of theirs.”
What does this mean for the Steam Box? Nobody can be sure, but we do know that Valve are working on their own hardware, some of which was detailed here. More news as it comes.
Source: Eurogamer
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Called it. I always thought it was weird that xi3 were always very careful to never mention steam or steam box. Phrases like “see the big picture” allude to it being great for steam, but thought it seemed sketchy.
Was waiting for this news, I thought the same as you elliot.
considering the price they are asking, without even disclosing the specs of the gpu, it seems like valve made the right move
Not at all surprising. Most info points to the APU containing the Radeon 7660G which is severely underpowered for what they’re trying to achieve. For the price, Xi3 pretty much shot themselves in the foot by trying to make the piston too small which severely limited their hardware capability and drives the price through the roof.
In comparison, a well constructed mini-itx box (i5, 8GB ram, GTX660 which destroys the 7660G, 2TB HDD) can be had for below $700, leaving room for the controllers, cables, keyboard/mouse and remotes you’ll actually need before it’s a useful, functional console. Mini-ITX would even fit in the average TV cabinet as well. I have an i5, 8GB + GTX580 stuffed into our tv cabinet for $1000 and it’s full ATX in a media case. So long as it’s not hugely heavy, or too big to fit in nicely with your AV gear/cabinet, who gives a F if they managed to make it a 4×4″ cube?
I agree with you Stewge.
They shouldn’t try to make it too small.
A Small Form Factor PC is only around the same size as PS3 anyway.
Size certainly should not be the driving point here.
It’s just a gimmick I think, if all they have is “it’s smaller” then i really don’t care, making things smaller doesn’t automatically make them better.