First 'Steam Box (Third Party)' will be $1,000 this holliday

Don't know if this was already posted, but in case it wasn't:

"Xi3's Piston—the first unofficial Steam Box console—will launch this holiday at a starting price of $1,000, the hardware manufacturer announced today.

If you preorder it before March 18, you'll get a $100 discount."

Kotaku

Note: Just to avoid any confusion, I want to reiterate that this is a third party steambox and not the oficial steambox that Valve will release(as the title says).

Prediction: That's gonna fail. You can build a full-fledged computer for lesser and the PS4 must be cheaper than that, or at least will have some way of getting it for cheaper. Unless they manage to drum up Apple levels of hype for it, not likely.

A thousand dollars? It better be a powerful box to justify that price. I'm building a pretty awesome computer for 1200. And you know, it's a computer.

yeah, i gotta agree, that thing will fail, why buy a thousand dollar box when you can build a dedicated PC for gaming for around that much?

Yeah, that seems like it will fail at that price.

Good luck trying to sell units at that price.

You can spend $1000 on building a modern gaming PC from scratch. The question is if the features are worth that cost.

I have like zero interest in that, considering I just built a $1200 pc. Other than brand satisfaction I still can't see what this steambox thing brings to the table.

It was never designed to sell on en mass its a niche product to begin with (the fist sized box, piston or whatever its called). Hopefully other "steam boxes" will be significantly cheaper.

That's about how much my pc cost, so yeah, won't be buying that thing.

It's going to fail? I'm doubting these guys are expecting huge sales - valve might expect more with their version. But right now it's a piece of tech for enthusiasts to play with. But failure doesn't really matter anyway, it's just hardware. All the games, that its being marketed for playing, are still published on whatever operating system you decide to install on it. It's a glorified pre-built PC.. which is also what a console is, except they have a proprietary OS.

Seeing as you could piece together a decent PC for that price yourself that seems real dumb price wise.

Too expensive. The enthusiast crowd willing to pay that can probably build something that will be better for the same price and the masses that would be interested in that kind of device for an easy way to get into PC gaming won't pay a 1000$.

If they want to get PC gaming to the mainstream they need to take a loss on the hardware. The size of the box isn't what is keeping most people away from PC gaming, it is the price. I know a third-party isn't going to do that, but I'm really hoping Valve will. The more PC gamers out there the better PC ports will be.

Yeah...no.

Well, it's small I'll give it that, but size is not something I'm concerned about. I've been running gaming laptops for the last six years or so because I do a lot of traveling for work, however, spending $1500 minimum every two years to have a rig that can handle everything is starting to get grating (Tomb Raider just laid a smack-down on my G74, the first game I couldn't play on ultra settings), so I've decided to build myself a desktop gaming rig. Now, I foresee a few problems with these 'Steambox' products, mainly PC gamers are fairly rooted with their current systems and a little box is probably unlikely to turn their heads. Also, many of those that play console games, play them because they don't want the hassles that come with PC gaming and will not change to anything resembling it. I have a bunch of friends that I used to play console shooters with who, when I went back to PC, wouldn't come with me despite my offer to set up their systems etc. Lastly, getting back to my original train of thought, the rig I'm currently mulling over is most likely going to resemble something around the size of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it will be very easily upgradeable, not to mention with a simple HDMI cable plays fine in your living room. Now how in their collective wisdom are they going to make something the size of 'Piston' upgradeable in the long-term? I'll eat my words if it turns out to be a hit, but for now, I'll stick to my PCs thank you very much.

but this is also a computer

It's AMD trinity based, most likely one of the mobile chips, So no it's not powerful at all.

You can build something very similar to what's inside it for about $400, your paying $600 extra for a cool looking form factor.

I didn't say it was a very good computer. But it is a computer. You should be able to wipe it out and put anything you want on it, or presumably install packages on it to make it look like regular desktop linux. What I want more than the box is the linux distro that it will run. Then you could just repartition your machine to have it on a separate partition running on a rig that you build yourself.

valve helping to finance it? hunh. wouldn't pay $1000 for one though. probably wouldn't buy an official one either.

still, you gotta wonder what the market for this would actually amount to with new consoles on the way and a price like that.

This is crazy, I don't see how this would appeal to the PC or the console crowd.

Did everything turn out okay with your hand?

YEA!............NO!

Failed already, too expensive as you can just build a pc at that price... Dont see the benefits.

@max_cherry: never went.

Just build your own pc for that price. How dumb ...

They priced themselves out of the market.

It is such a joke. 1000 dollars for a computer I could build for 500? It's barly more powerful then current gen consoles, and next gen is around the corner (And will cost much less then this.)

Insanity near the level of the Phantom.

Yeah, that $750 SSD upgrade is exactly the kind of stuff I hate about proprietary consoles. Just learn how to build a computer. It really isn't insanely hard. You can follow build templates to start out.

The Valve steambox does indeed interest me but 1000$ for a third party?! I say no thank you! With that amount of money I'll be able to upgrade my PC, heck I'll ever be able to make another midranged PC.

I really don't know how they will advertise this with the new consoles and whatnot.

Was it a joke the whole time?

Whether or not people buy this thing seems secondary to me. It is good that Valve is saying "here is a target platform that we will make sure functions" even if it turns out that it is more hypothetical than actual. What is primary is that the published specs can either be bought complete or off the shelf and it functions completely as Valve advertises.

This appears to be aimed at people ignorant of how to build a pc. If you look at apple products, people are more than willing to pay extortionate prices for inferior hardware. As long as it's streamlined and looks pretty.

Sorry for the second post so quickly: This box isn't "barly more powerful then current gen consoles" but that is irrelevant. It would be easy to create a cutting edge box from scratch to a budget of $800. The rest of it is covering cost of labor and reserving some for defects and returns. It isn't a crazy price tag like you suggest but it is easy to DIY and save money.

Ain't nobody got time fo dat!

But seriously fuck that noise.

So what did you expect? The steam box essentially is a PC. And PCs cost money, more then consoles. I never saw a steam box with the power of a 1200,- PC retailing for 399,-. If that was possible Xbox720 and PS4 hardware developers would be a bunch of stupid fools.

When I first heard this news, I was really interested...

...but then I realized I could build a better PC for the price and have more functionality.

They have to go more competitive if they want to make money.

lol

At least when you overpay for pre-built PC's, you usually get something pretty powerful.

This is just a total waste of money.

You could argue this about the wii and the apple products. They still sell like gold.

Except the Wii and Apple products have certain advantages. The Wii (and Wii U) is the only thing that can play Wii or Wii U games. Apple products provide a high level of polish, convenience and reliability through their interface, back end support (itunes), and high quality industrial design. These things are worth the extra cost to many consumers.

This thing is literally just a tiny computer. It can't do anything that a normal sized computer couldn't do. In fact, it will do many things worse. The only advantage this has is that it will look better on a shelf.

Frankly, you can build, or have built, a high quality micro-pc for less than this, and with better components. It's a waste.

Why would you possibly buy a third party Steam Box when the official one is coming this year...

Gaben said it would be more steamlined. So it's very much like an apple in that regard.

A few things:

1. This isn't the steambox. It may not even have any of the actual steambox front end installed.

2. The actual, official, steambox will come in a variety of flavors (good, better, best), and will probably start a good deal cheaper than this.

3. One of the biggest things that Gaben is focusing on is new input devices. This won't have any of those.

this is a waste of money. The actual steambox will probably be more interesting.

Nope.

I'm sorry if this is ignorant, but what makes a Steambox a Steambox? This thing just appears to just be a mini PC.

All the people saying this won't sell, well no shit, it's not a mass market device and it's still hella impressive when you look at how it's put together.

If I had money to throwaway, I'd love one of these in my living room just for media alone. It's incredibly slick.

...although that said I really would probably just make myself a much more powerful HTPC for cheaper. If I had the money, one would go somewhere! Just for gaming, even this at $1000 actually has pretty so-so specs, for a living room machine I'd like it to be quite capable for controller gaming now and then.

The steambox is an upcoming mini PC that will be released by Valve, featuring a custom Linux front end, specifically built to play PC games on a television screen using Steam's Big Picture Mode. It will feature some sort of new input device (read: controller) and will provide some sort of baseline for PC developers.

I see a Epic Fail captain

well there is also software and services...

aren't you to old for being this kind of fanboy?

I'm not really sure why you are attempting to argue this or why you are badly attempting to insult me.

Part of the appeal of apple products from a physical and software perspective is ease of use. Very streamlined, very overpriced.