The Piston AKA The Steam Box

On 03/19/2013 at 01:59 PM by smartcelt

Is this the Steam Box,or isn't it? It's still up in the air. Even though they are already taking pre-orders for it. This is the Piston,which was announced at this year's CES back in January. It's made by Xi3. During CES there was a ton of buzz about this thing. Mainly because it had been dubbed the Steam Box. Valve was involved with this project and had allowed this to happen. It seemed to be exactly what they wanted. This is not a techy blog,not going to throw a lot of specs at you. But I will tell you what I know of it. It has an AMD chip with 3.2 Ghz of quad-core processing power. Has 1 HDMI port and 12 I/O ports[including 8 for USB]. You can swap out motherboards should you ever desire to upgrade it. They can't even seem to nail down if it runs Windows or Linux. I heard that is where it began to go wrong between Valve and Xi3. Valve wants Linux. The price of the Piston is 1,000 bucks. Pretty steep when they won't say if it is actually the Steam Box.

I do know it will not be as powerful as a PS4. Or the console that Microsoft is preparing to unveil. So why buy it? I know very little about using Steam or how Big Picture comes into it. I will probably join Steam this week at some point. I've been hearing things about it since I joined this site. I was hoping that some of you who have it could enlighten me. Does the device you use have to run Windows 8? Can you run it through XBOX 360? If you have a SmartTV,like I do,can you stream to it? So many questions I have about this service. I hear that Valve is working on their very own design for a Steam Box. Should I wait? Perhaps it would be wise.The thing that I ponder the most is this. Why pay $1,000 for a tiny computer that is not a match for PS4? It makes no sense to me. There has to be an easier way to get Steam into my gaming rig.

I'm going to investigate this further tonight. But any info from you would be greatly appreciated. What do you think of this machine? Does it sound like something you want? I have a big decision to make this Christmas. But for now I am leaning toward the PS4 in a big way.

Ranger1

03/19/2013 at 02:13 PM

Wayde, Steam is just Valve's download service for PC games. Runs on just about any PC, as far as I can tell. I was using it with XP and now 7.

smartcelt

03/19/2013 at 03:12 PM

I'll have to get it on my PC tonight. See what sort of games are available. Thanks for the info,Tami.

leeradical42

03/19/2013 at 02:35 PM

Ok so what i know is this,the piston from xi3 will be $999 it comes with 128gb of solid state disc u can get an extra 512 gb for a whopping $750 more it will use the Radeon 7000 series graphics and will support 3 monitors and it will use Linux and use steam thats what i know as of now.

03/19/2013 at 03:14 PM

You are right on all points,Lee. I just wonder if Valve is going to do an end run and pull out of the partership they formed with Xi3. I'm going to wait and see. I can't imagine shelling out dough like that on a promise.

Aboboisdaman

03/19/2013 at 02:37 PM

Steam's sales are utterly ridiculous. If you get on there beware! There are so many great games and sales all the time. The Steam Box looks cool, but you could buy a high end PC for that price lol. The only console I'm excited about is the Ouya.

goaztecs

03/19/2013 at 04:01 PM

I was gonna say the same thing about just buying/building a high end PC. Reading about this sounded interesting, until I saw the price. I'm not a big PC gamer and I haven't followed it much but concept wise I like this little box, and it's ability to be upgraded.

03/19/2013 at 03:16 PM

That was what started me thinking! Those amazing sales I was hearing about. I had almost forgotten about the Ouya. That is much more affordable. And it's dedicated to providing games that do not cost a whole lot.

KnightDriver

03/19/2013 at 04:03 PM

Darn, I thought this Steambox thing was going to be much cheaper. I guess I should just hook up my laptop to my TV instead.

03/19/2013 at 04:57 PM

There has to be a way. I am not living up to my name today. I am completely ignorant about Steam and Big Picture. I know it's their way of integrating their service into the living room.

03/19/2013 at 05:41 PM

which would be really cool but not at that price,i will just stick to consoles

03/19/2013 at 06:25 PM

I need to do the math. I could get both next gen consoles for what this machine costs!

Super Step Contributing Writer

03/19/2013 at 06:48 PM

Yeah, $1000 is way too much for that. As for Steam, as Tami said, it seems to run on pretty much any software; I have it on PC/Windows XP, seems like it's friendly to Ubuntu and PS3 users given what I've seen on its pages, and it runs Mac as well, though it often seems like there are a lot more games able to be run on Windows than anything else (and if you have XP or above, you're usually good to go).

My problem is, it won't let me add friends until I pay for its games, but it does seem to have slowed down my Dell D620 laptop, and I don't necessarily want to pay for something if it also might slow down my computer. I was eyeing Sonic Spinball, but might see if that's available on my phone, where I'd likely play it most.

Homelessrook

03/19/2013 at 07:39 PM

I wonder how much heat that little box makes.

03/19/2013 at 08:28 PM

That part they have covered. It's a "flow thru" system. Air is moved thru it from one end and pushed out the other side.

GrayHaired

03/19/2013 at 09:51 PM

Steam: I visited the site once and the deals look good, Im just not a PC gamer.

PixlBit