[Niall]

After rumours, speculation, confirmation, and then yet more rumours, we finally have a glimpse at a real-life, working Steam Box. It’s code-named ‘Piston’ and it’s being made by a company called Xi3 Corporation, in whom Valve has plunked a load of dosh. Oh, and it’s tiny.

Spoiler:

Xi3 is a micro-PC specialist, and it’s using its own X7A system as the basis for the Piston. Apparently the fully-finished Steam Box will pack a quad-core chip and 1TB of storage. Other specs are in short supply, but it’ll come packing HDMI out and more USB ports than you can shake a stick at, plus it’ll be upgradable, because the motherboard is said to be modular. Not that you’ll fit regular PC components in that small a box, but at least you won’t have to junk the whole thing, should Steam games demand more specs.

The tiny Piston cube certainly looks the part, and wouldn’t go a miss sat in with all your other AV equipment, plus being that small, hopefully it’ll be quiet too. Valve really could be onto a winner here if the Steam Box is priced right. [Gizmodo]

This is rather exciting. If it's cheap then this could really be a hit. Steam is great anyway and I just ugh I hope it makes it to market at an affordable price and that it's actually good!