37 
After rumours, speculation, confirmation, and then yet more rumours, we finally have a glimpse at a real-life, working Steam Box. It’s code-named ‘Piston’ and it’s being made by a company called Xi3 Corporation, in whom Valve has plunked a load of dosh. Oh, and it’s tiny.
Xi3 is a micro-PC specialist, and it’s using its own X7A system as the basis for the Piston. Apparently the fully-finished Steam Box will pack a quad-core chip and 1TB of storage. Other specs are in short supply, but it’ll come packing HDMI out and more USB ports than you can shake a stick at, plus it’ll be upgradable, because the motherboard is said to be modular. Not that you’ll fit regular PC components in that small a box, but at least you won’t have to junk the whole thing, should Steam games demand more specs.
The tiny Piston cube certainly looks the part, and wouldn’t go a miss sat in with all your other AV equipment, plus being that small, hopefully it’ll be quiet too. Valve really could be onto a winner here if the Steam Box is priced right. [CVG, Kotaku]
Valve Has Plenty of Boxes, But No Steam Box
A discreet logo would be great
That looks photoshopped on…badly!
My 2 minute photoshop skills at work there. If you can do better, send it my way.
That sounds like a challenge
Now I have a legit copy of CS2
whats your email address Sam I have done a 3 min version for you
3 minute?! Alright Picasso, calm your boots! We don’t want none of your fancy-pants 3 minute photoshopping here!
you’re probably right, I’ll go sell my image to engadget.
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/contact-us/
Good eyes!
Respect to Sam for admitting his error lol!
http://www.lazygamer.net/pc-gaming/valves-steam-box-has-a-codename-and-some-new-details/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Lazygamer+(LazyGamer+.%3A%3A+Console+and+PC+Gaming+News+%3A%3A.)
“Valve really could be onto a winner here if the Steam Box is priced right.”
More like if the specs of the device are worth it. Actual graphics cards are out the window in that form, so the real question is what they will be doing to make this work as a gaming machine.
Would probably have been more sensible to go to a full mini-ITX size form factor and allow people to upgrade it with as powerful a card as would fit in the case.
Still, nothing to stop someone putting together their own – something I do plan on doing at some point.
I didn’t think it would need a graphics card if most of the processing will be done on the Steam servers, as has been rumoured? Or have I been living in a parallel universe?
Another universe, not parallel though.
That’s more the nVidia games console thing side of things. Who knows, though, it could be a similar thing in here.
This thing is overkill for a streaming service, which would require little more than a basic terminal. This thing actually packs a punch, despite its size. Precise specs are hard to come by (and Xi3′s website is currently down), but apparently…
“we see it powered by a new Quad-Core 64-bit, x86-based processor running at up to 3.2GHz, integrated with up to 384 graphics shader cores, and 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and able to handle graphics-rich computer games like Crysis 2 with ease.”
I can’t imagine that all this hardware in such a small space will amount to less than £500 without Valve making a loss on it.
But a gaming PC (essentially) that one could reasonably install without a bulldozer? One can dream.
Well bulldozer works well on Linux, with a OS that supports FMA4 a Bulldozer chip will beat a Sandy Bridge one.
The chip sounds like a A10-5800K APU, a 5800K gives 4 Cores, 384 graphics shader cores.
A A10-5800K can run Crysis 2 pretty well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvjA3iMqvjI
He means the JCB variety of bulldozer, but I think you’re right about their choice of chip.
Oh I see, yeah that passed over me I couldn’t quite understand he comment, I blame the 12 hours of work I had today. Now I read it at home it makes sense.
This response is absolutely excellent however. I smiled from ear to ear. Well done sir.
Looks sweet!
Any ETA? Or price ideas yet?
I want one!
Unfortunately not, although Valve might dish some details soon. At least, that’s what I’m hearing on the grapevine.
E3 announcement
Uh sill comment system removed the fake html tag
Looks good to me! lets hope its not a stupid price
It looks beautiful, dunno how it’s going to have enough power to crunch the big games though.
I reckon this will merely turn out to be a painfully expensive lesson for Valve. They want to take on MS & Sony. That’ll fail. Existing PC gamers (i.e. me) won’t care about it one way or the other. So who’d want one ?
Existing PC gamers already have an existing PC, so it’s not aimed at them. Perhaps they’re gunning for the console crowd which is, er, ambitious.
Valve, you’ve finally gone and done it haven’t you. You’ve created a Companion Cube replicant. Thank you!!
Am i the only one who thinks it looks like a toaster?
At least we know for certain this is a micro-beast for connectivity, but what really has me interested is the modular upgrades…wow gimmie dat.
Looks like steams about to put pressure on competitors.
I wonder if this will be priced to create a scolding deal.
‘Piston’ could really drive innovation.
My excitement for this is boiling over.
It looks like it’s got enough steam (pun intended) to render games on its own, so if I’m able to download and play existing Steam games on this box, then we’re on to a winner.
And if they subsidise it like they do with consoles (apparently the Xi3′s full price is $999), I’d be queueing to get one…
Reminds me of the UK’s “Tiny Computers”‘s original product: an 8-bit IBM compatible that plugged into your TV. The system box was slightly smaller than a housebrick, which (for the time) really WAS “tiny”. But nowhere NEAR as tiny as THIS is!
That box screams Ouya to me :3
USB 2.0 ports? Presumably that’ll change before release!
And what do you think those blue ports to the left are? Is this someone pretending to know what they’re talking about by any chance?
I was looking at the picture on a phone and couldn’t see the out-of-focus 3.0 ports clearly. I submit my most humble and heartfelt apologies at having offended you so unbelievably.
If these were indeed the circumstances, then I return your previously submitted humble and heartfelt apologies with humble and heartfelt recognition, under the firm condition that should you reproduce this situation in such a unfathomable and unprofessional manner, I will be under the obligation to take matters further.
The thing they are not showing here is the power supply.
This bothers me a little as I can see that being bigger than the box itself.