News Xi3's Piston product plagued by controversy

So no Valve support and hideous expense, bye bye XI3....

 

The plot thickens

 

I always felt this was some distance away from the "SteamBox" anyway.

 

Xi3: hey Valve, heard you making a console
Valve: yeah but we dont do hardware
Xi3: lets team up
Valve: cool, I'll send a guy round with some details

Valve: Hey, heard you teamed up with the enemy
Xi3: It's not that simple
Valve: This is not cool

 

Who's the enemy?

Remind me again who Valve makes the majority of it's money running on?

 

"Steam if you choose, but you'll also be able to access other platforms as well"

 

I think they just jumped the gun and started shouting too much before Valve was quite ready. I understand why valve would want to step away after they kept name dropping them so much.

Have a little decorum dudes.

 

I remember hearing rumours that the steambox would be a converted slim line alienware machine, something similar to their X51 system, and considering ubuntu's links with dell... steamOSbuntu lol!

 

Thought dell stopped giving the option having Ubuntu as os

 

Sounds like they were making too much noise and then probably got a little too much bad press when they said what the price was going to be.. Makes sense for Valve/Steam to distance themselves.

 

During CES I tweeted

My SATA cables are safe it would seem

 

Looks to me like Valve paid Xi3 to make a prototype steam box, Xi3 starting making noise and saying they had investment from valve (to make a prototype) and Valve said "You've made too much noise and we don't want your box, bye"

 

For me Steam Box died at the point EA took their stuff off. I know a lot of EA games are trash anyway but for it to succeed it needs to be able to play every pc game which is to say every console port. You're never going to get it on Linux and plowing dev time into it is a bit of a waste of time imo. I mean they're trying to open the whole industry up which is a good thing but it's just too much of a long shot by the looks of it.

 

I can see the appeal of it. Not saying I'll get one (I don't even have the right sort of TV to hook it up to), but I understand where they're coming from. Will it get tons of AAA games? Not likely...but I've got tons of games on Steam (and from Humble Bundles) that could or already have Linux ports.

Depends on the type of gamer you are, I suppose - I still play the old GTA games, VC and SA, on occasion, and Saints Row III was a blast, but a lot of what I play aren't console fodder.

At the same time, I seriously doubt I'd drop that kind of money on a SteamBox. Sure, it's kinda sexy, but not for a casual gaming box when I could build one for a third the cost (it'd be bigger and whatnot...but I don't have that kind of money to piss down my leg.)

 

Maybe Valve decided to distance itself because of the price-point being so high? It seems most people are saying stuff like "$1,000 ... Erm, no.". I wonder if Valve had no say in how much Xi3 sells the Piston for and thought that the bad publicity would do them harm?

Also, seems peculiar timing that so many got the push at Valve HQ, and now Valve distance itself from what appeared to be their nearest partner in SteamBox dealings.

 

Xi3: "We made a 'steambox' it is 1000 dollars"
Me: "hmmmz, very expensive for basic PC hardware"
Xi3: "No its not expensive, you can connect to Valve's steam for your games and also to Origin and others"
Me: "So you made a expensive Slimline PC, with low specs that can connect to internet"
Xi3: "Well ehm...... yes"

 

It's more then just a steam box, I'll give them that. I didn't realize before now it was running Windows.

It's just a tiny PC. The form factor is interesting, the low end APU hardware for $1000 not so much.

 

Let me get this right. One variant of Steambox is Linux. What percentage of Steam's catalogue is Linux and what percentage is Windows? Actually I can try and answer that. Steam has 164 Linux games on file and 6467 are windows. So what chance do Valve have of changing that balance before Steamboxes are born?

I'm not saying the Valve are wasting their time with a Linux gaming platform but its hardly main-stream nor is it likely to be main-stream any time soon.

 

Gabe has said that the smaller variant will be able to receive streamed content delivered by our full PCs. Therefore I could install these in at least 3 rooms including 2 bedrooms plus living room, and stream from my home office. The smaller variants will run Linux. I'm not sure the mission is to a tip a balance - more so to make it happen, make it convenient and affordable.