Xi3 Reponds To Valve Comments About Piston

Xi3 has responded to comments about their new Piston PC gaming device that Valve made yesterday. Valve, the company that owns and operates Steam, issued a statement on Tuesday which made it clear that they no longer had any involvement with the Piston.

Whether the leaders at Xi3 felt that their company was being unfairly maligned or whether they simply wanted to keep their name in the press, the company released a statement in which it detailed what their involvement with Valve had been before now.

The founder, president, and CEO of the company, Jason A. Sullivan, issued a statement in which he said, “We reaffirm the fact that we received an investment from Valve Corporation (as we previously disclosed during the 2013 International CES trade show), and we did so with Valve’s written permission.”

Sullivan added that Valve’s CEO Gabe Newell had asked him not to divulge just how much of a relationship the two companies had. Sullivan said that he honored that request up until now.

Xi3 was asked by Valve, according to Sullivan, to build the Piston, and that both companies showed off the device at their respective booths at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Perhaps the most important tidbit of information that Sullivan wants consumers to know is that the Piston won’t be reliant on Steam. While the device will have certain interoperability with the video game store, it will actually be running a Microsoft Windows OS.

Sullivan pointed out that, at the moment, the vast majority of computer games out there are built to run on Windows. He also hinted that Valve and his company disagree as to whether or not a gaming console like this needs to be able to run exclusively on Steam.

The Xi3 Piston, which is available for pre-order now and will reportedly launch this holiday season, comes with a price tag of around $1,000.