Xi3 Corporation has announced that its Xi3 Piston is now available for pre-order, and will cost $999.99 (R9,162.40).
However, if you order before the closure of SXSW 2013 (7:59 GMT+2 Sunday, 17 March, 2013), you will get $100 off the price.
Pre-orderd Piston consoles are planned to be shipping in time for the 2013 holiday season.
It was revealed at CES 2013 that Valve had invested in company Xi3 to develop a prototype compact console capable of running Steam. This is not the mystical Steam Box, as Valve boss Gabe Newell clarified in an interview: Valve confirms internal development of “Steam Box” hardware
“Given the amount of awards, media attention and gamer interest the PISTON Console has generated since it was unveiled at CES 2013 in January, we’ve become seriously concerned that we will not be able to meet the demand for Piston Consoles this year,” said Jason A. Sullivan, founder, president and CEO of Xi3 Corporation.
“That’s why we have decided to begin accepting pre-orders on our PISTON Console, beginning today with the start of the SXSW Gaming Expo. Gaming Expo attendees will also get the benefit of being the first to see the PISTON Console in action.”
The Piston is a fully-encased gaming-centric PC, which will act as a home console. The Piston features 128GB SSD storage, 8GB of RAM and a 3.2Ghz Quad Core (AMD R464).
Xi3 hasn’t released any further details on the hardware and operating system of the device.
Xi3 Piston rear view – image from Polygon
Source: Xi3
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This is incredibly cool (novelty factor, mainly), but that price is completely unrealistic. For R10k I’d rather just build a gaming rig that will outperform this any day for like R9k and spend the rest on beer/cake/more games for my Steam library/all of the above.