Valve meeting with hardware and content developers at CES, Piston one of many prototypes (original) (raw)

A Valve official tells Polygon that they plan to spend their week at the Consumer Electronics Show meeting with hardware and content developers in their booth and showcasing “multiple” custom hardware prototypes.

On Monday, Valve grabbed the CES spotlight when hardware partner Xi3 announced plans for their “steam box” Piston computer game system. The still-in-development Steam-optimized mini PC, backed by an “investment from Valve Corporation”, will offer up to 1 TB of internal storage and modular component updates.

Xi3 chief marketing officer David Politis walked Polygon through what they could say about the device, but were mostly tightlipped on details. While they couldn’t discuss the price, they did say the device is based on its “performance level” X7A, which is priced at $999.

Reached for comment this morning about the forthcoming piece of hardware, Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi told Polygon that Piston is just one of many hardware prototypes they brought to the show.

“Valve will be at CES to meet with hardware and content developers in our booth space,” Lombardi said. “We are bringing multiple custom (hardware) prototypes as well as some off-the-shelf PCs to our CES meetings.”

Lombardi described the prototypes as “low-cost, high-performance designs for the living room that are great candidates for Steam and Big Picture.

“We will be sharing more information to the press and public in the coming months,” he added.