Piston Gaming Console Pre-Orders Now Being Taken, Xi3 Announced At SXSW
Valve, the company behind the soon-to-come Steam Box gaming console, is also lending its support to another startup looking to jump into the gaming market. Xi3 Corporation announced at the annual South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas this weekend its new Piston Console is available for pre-order from the Xi3 website.
Xi3 made the announcement during the Game Expo portion of the SXSW. Piston, which first made headlines at the annual CES show back in January, will be available in three models. The cheapest version, sporting 128 gigabytes of internal memory, is going for a smooth $1000. Two other models, a 256GB version and a 512GB version will sell for $1,340 and $1,750, respectively.
Xi3 describes Piston as “a computer game system that’s optimized to support Steam and its Big Picture mode interface for high-definition televisions.” Furthermore, the system is somewhat of a hybrid – a cross between gaming console and PC. While there is no mention on an exact date when Piston will be released, the company did say it will ship in time for the 2013 Holiday season.
The company also released a few specifications of its gaming console, including that it will feature 8GB of RAM and a 3.2Ghz Quad Core processor. Other than that, the rest is a mystery, including what graphics processor it will use. The company did mention all pre-orders that come in by March 17 will get $100 knocked off the price – this goes for any of the three models ordered.
Jason A. Sullivan, Xi3 founder, president and CEO, said in a statement due to the “amount of awards, media attention and gamer interest the Piston Console has generated since it was unveiled at CES 2013 in January,” he was concerned his company would “not be able to meet the demand for Piston Consoles this year.”
“That’s why we have decided to begin accepting pre-orders… beginning today with the start of the SXSW Gaming Expo. Gaming Expo attendees will also get the benefit of being the first to see the Piston Console in action,” added Sullivan.
“Clearly, the computer/video gaming market is huge, both in the personal computer and traditional console markets,” he continued. “That being said, we believe there is a crying need for a machine that captures the best of both worlds, with the upgradeability of computer gaming rigs and the design and form factor of consoles. We believe our Piston consoles do exactly that-deliver the beauty and small size of consoles with the upgradeability of computers.”
Xi3 said their Piston Console is derived from the forthcoming X7A Modular Computer, the company’s first power-user computer.
The Salt Lake City, Utah-based Xi3 Corporation was founded in 2010. The Piston Console maker said it utilizes “The Power of X” to bring its building block approach to the world of computing and gaming, an approach Xi3 applies internally and externally to hardware solutions and software applications.
For more information about Xi3 Corporation, please visit www.Xi3.com.
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