Xi3 Launches Pre-orders for Piston 'Steambox' Console
Xi3 says get 'em while they're hot.
Back in January, Xi3 teased a dainty little PC it called the Piston. The Piston caused quite a stir at CES 2013 in Las Vegas as it was pegged to be Valve Software's upcoming (unofficial) Steam Box. Well, this week brings us yet more news of the Piston, as the modular computer is now up for pre-order.
Xi3 this past weekend announced that pre-orders for the Piston would kick off at South by Southwest in Austin. The list price of Xi3's Piston console PC starts at $999.99 but those that place their order during SXSW will get a $100 discount off the list price. In case you were unaware, SXSW does not end until Sunday, so there's plenty of time to talk yourself into buying one of these early Steam Boxes.
"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 packs a quad core CPU clocked to 3.2Ghz as well as 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD. According to Xi3, pre-ordered Piston Consoles will ship in time for the 2013 holiday season.

It's way to expensive even with a $100 discount, don't see this lasting very long unless they cut the price in half.
In other words, there's no dedicated graphics card.
In other words, this really expensive for what you get.
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bulldozer/AMD-R-Series%20R-464L%20-%20RE464LDEC44HJE.html
source: http://xi3.com/buy_now-piston.php
That's actually 2.3GHz quad-core not a 3.2. Pretty shady marketing. I've seen one tech site make any kind of notice of that little fact. Either most sites are oblivious to elementary factual accuracy or they just don't care.
I was really hopeful the “Piston” would be something worth buying, but after seeing the price $999. My hopes have been extinguished.
For starters, even upgrading my mobo, CPU to SB or IB, + ram, + add a 660gt card, I’m only looking at around $700 give or take with descent components. Plus I get money for my old system making it even cheaper!
I’m trying to wonder who the “Piston” geared toward? I mean no one in their right mind is going to pay double the price as the new Xbox or PS4 are they? So why is the price not within the prices of those systems? I have an idea maybe Valve/Steam can team up with Asus or another Mobo maker and start with Valve/Steam Themed board instead…
Finally, I’d rather see Steam/Valve use resourses to make or help publish better “deep” games than sink into hardware…
700 buck PC plus 300 bucks in games would be my call. That would be at least 3 good AAA games and some filer games on sale. You would then have stuff to play and a better rig to play them on.
Here is the thing, they are pricing this thing as if they were up against Apple. Look at the Apple prices and you'd see how they got to this number in some rational way. But they are not Apple. It is a plain mistake. As a shark might say, "I am out."
First, it's way too expensive. Second, it needs to be more powerful than "next-gen" consoles to appeal to couch gamers. The target audience for this doesn't know or care that it will be an open platform and PC games are cheaper to purchase (outside of AAA launch titles). They're going to see a price tag that's double of its competitors.
I don't know why they made it so small -- mini-ITX with a capable GPU (like a 7750) would have been perfect for a small living room PC. Now it's like taking all the downsides of a laptop with none of the advantages of a gaming PC or a console.
That or accurately Tom's accurately stated it clocks at 3.2Ghz, which is true with turbo, and you just made yourself look foolish. One or the other.
People who epically fail at living on a budget love this kinda crap. Remember back when the first Razr phone came out? HOLY FLAT PHONE BATMAN TAKE MY MONEY!!!
but the thing that bothers me is, consoles perform well because they have similar config (unlike a pc), so games look and run good. but how can you compete against a pc if you have an iGPU, and at the same time not compete against the consoles? and esp with that price.
it's like the worst of both worlds, crappy for a pc and it's not a console...for $999!
The PS4 has a GPU that's undoubtedly around half an order of magnitude faster whilst being about half the price, maybe under half the price, of this. Even a pre-built laptop can be had for $1000 that kicks the crap out of this and is still a horrible value compared to a cheap pre-built desktop, let alone a home-built system. I could go on. This isn't just expensive for a DOY person, it's horribly expensive even for non-DOY gamers. Heck, you can probably get similarly performing systems of fairly similar size for much less money. The price is so high that it's unreasonable from the consumer's perspective to such a degree that it's almost more fact than opinion to say what I've said here.