Well, that was underwhelming. After announcing “the wait is over” late last week, Xi3 has revealed… some slightly more detailed specs for their $US1000 Piston living-room PC, as well as a release date of November 29. The Piston will not natively use Steam OS.
Xi3 Taps “Black Friday” (Nov. 29, 2013) as General Availability Date for its PISTON Console… [Xi3]
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27 responses to “Sorry, Xi3’s Latest Piston Announcement Isn’t That Exciting”
A grand? Pass.
$1000 for this! No thanks.
Honestly, the steam boxes will all be around this price. They will probably be bespoke systems that carry a premium because they carry the steam branding (or certification).
especially given theyre touting them as ‘gaming machines for the loungeroom’. I can build a high end gaming machine for under a grand…
Not that tiny! I also wouldn’t try and park a truck on a rig that you built. 🙂
P.S. It is expensive.
Has this ever been a feature you sought out in entertainment products? Must be able to have a truck run it over and survive. What size truck are we talking? 3t 5t 9t 13t does this include the 42t loaded trailer? Or are we talking a “pickup truck”?
I just don’t know the market they are aiming for here. My PC can do more than just gaming, your trying to sell me a machine for gaming for more than it would cost to build a PC that can do more. I’m going to need to know specifications. @weresmurf is right given a $1000 wouldn’t you prefer to put it towards a PC of your own design? I’d rather spend $1500 and get precisely what I want.
Now if this thing was $600 we might be getting somewhere.
Your right! But its price is purely convenience based. From what I understand the high end model is gonna be pretty beastly. Its why laptops cost so much scaling all that hardware down takes a lot of money. At the end of the day I would just build my own. You will be able to load any operating system on those little things as well. I guess the my pc will do more things argument comes from its lack of disc drives and ports? Over all you are still right. As for the truck question we are talking your standard Toyota Tundra or ford f150 assuming your only parking a rear tire on it with an empty bed we are probably talking a weight of around 6 to 700 pounds. http://www.youtube.com/user/cubeboxconsole Apparently these guys are making a similar more powerful type of mini pc.
It’s been awhile. You realise Laptops are Branded which is why they are expensive. You need to compare a Pre-built HP PC to a HP Laptop and you’ll discover their price is much closer.
under a grand, I would hardly call that “High End”
Dunno where you shop, obviously somewhere expensive, but I would.
Does the Piston come with Windows? I remember seeing this indicated before in one of their media releases.
The inclusion of SteamOS (and more importantly, exclusion of other OS’) should cut down the price of actual Steam Machines.
So just make a pc with higher end gear and get it to run Steam OS as well? Problem solved, cheaper PC built.
oh I agree. I’ve got my old self made PC under my TV now as a HTPC and i can still use it for current gen games.
I just mean that a lot of the steam machines are going to be able to be priced at a more competitive price point as it won’t have an OS like windows inflate the cost. We’re not the target market. Console owners are.
Indeed, I agree, it’s just confusing what they’re aiming at…
Agreed a big chunk of the price is the os. Steam os better blow my socks off.
What. There’s no info at all on the actual CPU, GPU, or any other details. The pre-order page still shows only 128GB SSD. There is only one option, $999. Simply – what.
Here’s what I found:
“The console-like PC comes with a 3.2 GHz AMD Trinity Processor, 8GB of RAM and an 128GB SSD. It can be upgraded to hold two 512GB mSATA SSDs for a total of 1TB. In the future, it will be upgradable with new I/O boards.
It natively supports triple monitors thanks to 384 graphics cores – a Radeon 7000-Series GPU.”
The Future!
128gb ssd… that’s why it’s cheap. You’ll have to buy another hdd yourself if you want to actually install anything.
Guessing the implication is you’ll stream a lot of stuff.
Not with the Liberals NBN we won’t be able to… *bazinga*
I thought the streaming was local, from main PC -> steambox, not WAN.
To me, that would entirely defeat the purpose of a ‘steam box’ and make it the worlds most expensive and pointless HDMI extension cable lol.
Its one thing to be late to a party.
Its another to arrive after everyone has gone home, gotten old, raised families and died of old age.
Stupid, stupid idea. Expensive, unable to be upgraded, small capacity. I wish they would list ANY benefit of this box over any other PC.
Will not sell.
this is a thing?
For anyone interested, fresh from the features page of xi3’s site:
– 3.2 GHz AMD Trinity Processor
– Radeon 7000-Series GPU
– 8GB DDR3 Gaming RAM.
Also claims it uses less power than a light bulb (I’m personally a little skeptical), and runs cooler than a normal desktop (size considered, that is plausible). Seems like an alright system, but wouldn’t be something I would personally go for.
Jason Evagelho at Forbes has issued a “Buyer Beware” column
http://tiny.cc/bps93w
And just to clarify that Xi3 claimed the Piston was “financially backed by Valve.” A claim instantly refuted by Valves PR’s Doug Lombardi.