With all the excitement surrounding Steam Machines this year, it’s easy to forget about the controversal “Steam Box” from last year’s CES. As a reminder, in January 2013, Xi3 unveiled its Piston console, along with the news that the company had received an initial investment from Valve, indicating the Piston’s position as a Steam Machine. However, in March, Valve announced that it claimed no involvement with Xi3, sending ripples of confusion and drama throughout the industry.
Xi3 Piston was the first device which was revealed when Valve shared that they were about to make the jump into the world of hardware, although it must be noted that the Xi3 Piston is far from being a Steam Machine simply because “if you can play it on a computer you should be able to play it on a Piston”. That’s that then, and Xi3 CMO David Politis also shared, “We believe, and I think the market’s very clear about this, that the biggest concentration today is in the Windows marketplace. “We’re still friends. We still love Valve, we love Steam. “We’ve gone separate directions today – that doesn’t mean we’re not supporting Valve. They’ve got 50+ million users on Steam. Why wouldn’t you support them?