Whilst we wait patiently for Valve to reveal the first Steam box console, something that’s very similar is now available to buy from a company called Xi3. Their Piston micro PC looks set to do everything Valve’s mini gaming PC will, before Valve does it.
The Xi3 Piston is effectively a tiny yet very powerful PC aimed at gamers who use the Steam platform on PC and Mac. Pre-orders are now being taken, although the console isn’t expected to land on your doorstep until much later in the year.
Valve actually helped finance the Piston project, which we first saw at the start of the year in Vegas at CES. Packing in powerful components like a 3.2GHz quad-core AMD A10 processor, 8 gigs of RAM and a 128GB SSD, the mini PC hopes to drag you away from your Xbox or PS3 and start gaming on the PC platform.
Priced at around $1000 (~£670) it’s certainly a fair whack pricier than your average home console, yet cheaper than a top of the range gaming PC – heck, it’s cheaper than just the latest Nvidia GTX Titan graphics card on its own. The idea is that you’ll be able to play the latest games on the Steam platform but on your living room TV with gamepad controllers, not a keyboard and mouse – although you could use those if you really wanted to.
We’re big fans of the design, with a slick curved cube design and drilled chrome side plates. On one side of the Piston you have an incredible number of connections, including HDMI out, four USB ports, DVI out, audio out, Ethernet and more. Inside there’s barely any room, such is the amount of tech crammed in to such a small space.
At the moment it’s unclear as to whether Xi3’s Piston PC will make it across the pond to the UK, or whether we’ll have to wait for Valve’s own Steam Box. Check out the trailer below.