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Steam Box Prototype Unveiled at CES
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s reports that the mythical “Steam Box”—the name given to a dedicated, HDTV-optimized gaming PC from Valve—would be revealed this year, last night Valve and mini-PC maker Xi3 unveiled a device codenamed “Piston” at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Not much is known about the device other than this: it’s a little computer that fits in the palm of your hand, and was developed between the two companies specifically to work with Steam’s Big Picture Mode. Take a look at the video above to see our own Khail Anonymous get the scoop at CES.
In addition, a post on Polygon offers up a few quotes from Xi3’s founder and CEO, Jason A. Sullivan:
“Today marks the beginning of a new era for Xi3. This new development stage product will allow users to take full advantage of their large high-definition TV displays for an amazing computer game experience.
As a result, this new system could provide access to thousands of gaming titles through an integrated system that exceeds the capabilities of leading game consoles, but can fit in the palm of y our hand.”
Another post on Polygon from later in the evening offered up a few more details on what the Piston will pack. According to Xi3’s chief marketing officer David Politis, the device will have up to one terabyte of internal storage, and will be capable of “modular component updates, including the option to upgrade the PC’s CPU and RAM.” The demo unit on display at CES had an “IO board boasting one ethernet port, 1/8″ audio in/out, SPDIF optical audio, four USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports (with one dedicated to keyboard input), four eSATA ports, two Mini Display Port ports and one DisplayPort/HDMI port.”
No word on a price or release date, but the post explains that Xi3’s reps said that the Piston is based on the company’s X7A mini-PC, which carries a $999 price tag. I have a feeling, however, that such a price tag may be a little too high if this is indeed the console killer we’ve all been speculating about…
What do you think? Start laying your predictions about price and release date on us…NOW.
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for crying out loud they make no comments about it, and the thing is called “Piston” …i guess this E3 will be a very interesting one.
If the price tag is anywhere near the X7A`s then Sony and Microsoft have nothing to fear. My wild-ass-guess would be between $300-$499 at the most. But my wallet would love Valve even more if its lower.
It will never be that cheap if they plan on making you use the Steam library already available, and it would be stupid if it didn’t use it because then why not buy any other console then.
1000 dollars is a reasonable price IF it can run current gen triple A games seamlessly, but obviously the lower the better.
10 funbucks says it’ll come bundled with Half-Life 3.
If it does, and the price comes down a bit, the console war will be over, and PC will stand victorious!
In one glorious sweep, the PC will come out of the glorious ashes of its grave and destroy all the money hungry arseholes in its path. “Because it’s the hero the gaming community deserves and also the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt it. Because Gaben can take it. Because he’s not our hero. Steam is, a watchful protector. A dark Piston. “
Oh come on now, PC has had the best games, best variety of games, best hardware, and best software since its inception. I don’t think anyone can say it’s not the best…
Yes but the only problem PC had was its price, more to when upgrading. With this, that would be rendered moot.
PC prices have been becoming more reasonable as time has been moving forward, hell my desktop PC cost me 565 dollars and can runs most current gen games without batting and eye, I mean it ran skyrim and the super gpu heavy diablo 3, the problem is that most people buy into the mantra that you need to get everything brand new in order to run the latest games, the truth of the matter is that previous gen mid grade equipment can do a spectacular job running most games, and the reality is that a decent mid grade computer will probably last you years before you need to upgrade a few components like the video card or the ram or the power supply where as with a console you have to buy a brand new console, this is why the piston will trump the current consoles on the market because it will allow you to do the same thing in essence, the biggest issue will be price, if valve keeps it around 400 they will have a top notch machine that will kick sony and xbox out of the market once and for all, and this needs to happen, sony and xbox have been pulling too much s**t as of late, Take it from a person that owns all three consoles and a PC, A pc trumps them all, just the myth about the cost of a pc is exaggerated due to misinformation and elitists..
It won’t be able to run Half-Life 3 simply because it has some wussy ass cooling. Well, it could probably run it, but only because the Source engine can scale down pretty well.
There’s only one tiny heatsink in there, and even with big fans on the front and back grills, there’s no way that it could dissipate heat that a modern GPU puts off.
If anything it’ll be a supercharged mobile processor, maybe the kind that you can find in a laptop. I’d expect performance equal with a lower-end gaming laptop.
That’s what I was thinking! The original xbox 360 had a stupidly conceived cooling system, nearly baking any disk I put in. This prototype will be melting all of it’s solder’s and crapping out its guts after just a five hour gaming session. Is liquid nitrogen out of the question?
Right now this is a prototype pc, if valve is truly going to work on this then i’d say the final asking price will be around 400, which is not unreasonable, as time moves forward they’ll work on making the device more efficient in cooling and data storage, as it is though 1 terabyte can hold a lot of games. The down side to this is it would spark the console markets move to digitial thus eliminating the used game market, the upside is you and I both know it will be markeds with a massive steam sale.
In essence its not a bade idea, but my desktop can work some magic already so i will pass
The only negative I can really see with this is how powerful the device will be in entering the concole wars, also what will happen when gave newell passes from this world, we don’t want a repeat of apple now do we?
Actually, power shouldn’t be a problem. Just like the PS360, this device may opt to implement future services to keep up. If cloud gaming (Onlive, Grid, Whatever the hell Square Enix is doing) truly kicks off, then this box can turn into a little cable box for our media stations. I’m not gunna ever buy it, but it’s still a neat concept.
Will it be able to play EA games since they removed their games from steam to put them on origin?
Probably not.
I am actually REALLY interested in this.. I hope Valve turns this into a really great thing… sorry if this comment seems a little odd.. just got back from hospital and medication is in effect :p