Those wishing for the home console Valve has been working on may have to wait a few months to get their hands on it, but the Valve financed Xi3 Piston "Steam Box" can now be pre-ordered for $899.99, until March 18, according to Gamespot.
The Xi3 Piston is not the official Valve console, but it will be similar and able to use Steam's Big Picture mode to play games purchased on Steam. The base starting price for the system is $1,000, but those who preorder the system before the 18th will receive the reduced price.
The buyer will receive the super compact (It is about the size of a grapefruit) Xi3 Piston with a 128GB SSD hard drive for their thousand dollars, with models with 256GB and 512GB hard drives available for $1339.99 and 1749.99, respectively. Despite its small size, the console boasts 8 GB of RAM and a 3.2 Ghz Quad Core AMD A10 processor.
Those who preorder the mini PC can expect to have it shipped to them by the holiday season. However, this is not the official Valve home console, which eager customers can expect prototypes of within a few months.
Xi3 CEO Jason Sullivan gave out a press release giving out his expectations for his company's unique product.
"We believe there is a crying need for a machine that captures the best of both worlds, with the upgradeability of computer gaming rigs and the design and form factor of consoles. We believe our Piston Consoles do exactly that-deliver the beauty and small size of consoles with the upgradeability of computers."
It will be interesting to see in the future if the Piston and the Valve console end up on opposite sides of the console war, or even challenge the pantheon of the Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. With so many new consoles expected to come out during the end of the year, it will certainly be a year to remember for gamers.
- Contribute to this Story:
- Send us a tip
- Send us a photo or video
- Suggest a correction
