Valve Now Has ‘No Involvement’ With Xi3 Piston

Valve has announced that it no longer has any involvement with the Xi3 Piston. The device, which is set to serve as a sort of gaming PC that can hook up to the television in your living room had previously been thought of as a joint project between Xi3 and Valve.

The Piston has long been referred to as the “Steambox,” because of its fully interoperability with Steam, the online game shop that is run by Valve. It seems likely that the recent publicity that the Piston Xi3 has gotten thanks to the announcement that they would be launching this Holiday season prompted Valve to make its involvement in the project crystal clear.

Through a statement to the media, Valve’s Doug Lombardi said that his company was engaged in some “exploratory work” with Xi3 but they are not involved in anything that Xi3 is churning out. The price of the Piston might have begun to worry Lombardi and other higher ups in his company.

Valve has long been claiming that when they release their own Steam based device that is similar to the Piston that it will be affordable. The Xi3 Piston is currently priced at $999, though it can be had for $100 off for a very limited time.

Now that it appears we have a full on “Steambox” war on our hands it will be interesting to see what is offered up as an alternative to the Piston.

Xi3’s fully upgradeable device comes with 8 GB of RAM. It also has a 128 GB solid state drive that can actually be boosted all the way to 725 GB should you have a desire to plunk down even more money. The Piston also has a 3.2Ghz Quad Core chip.

Valve has yet to shed much light on the specs of their upcoming device but it seems likely that their measurements will be comparable to that of the Piston.