Valve no longer involved with Xi3 Piston

Once dubbed the Steam Box, the Xi3 Piston is no longer a Valve-associated product.

The machine was revealed at CES in January. Its makers confirmed that Valve had invested in the tech, leading to the media concluding that it was indeed the long-awaited Steam Box.

However, just days later Valve boss Gabe Newell clarified that while Piston would be a Steam Box” it would not be the Steam Box”, with the company planning to launch its own hardware later down the line.

Now it seems that Valve has severed all ties with the product.

"Valve began some exploratory work with Xi3 last year, but currently has no involvement in any product of theirs," Valve PR boss Doug Lombardi told Eurogamer.

Back to the Xi3, however. The machine will cost $1,000 when it arrives in the 2013 holiday season”. Furthermore, it will be fully upgradeable just like a standard PC.

It will out of the box include an AMD Quad Core 3.2Ghz CPU, a Radeon 7000-series GPU and 8GB of DDR3 RAM. These will come installed on isolated boards that can be swapped at will by the owner with any compatible Xi3 hardware.

It will also only draw 40w from the plug – far less than the 300-400w+ demanded by gaming PCs.