Xi3, the company making the mysterious Valve-backed "Piston Console," says that it will be revealing more information about the product this Monday.
In a brief update to the Xi3 site, the hardware makers say that "the wait is over," and that they'll have more info on the modular PC on Monday 9/30 at 11AM Mountain time, or 1PM Eastern. They also shared this image:
S
The Piston, a small, modular PC designed to be treated like a living-room gaming console, was first revealed in January. At that same time, Xi3 announced that they'd received an investment for the hardware from Valve. Since then, it's become a bit unclear just what role Valve played in the Piston's development—the next day Valve distanced itself from Xi3, saying that the Piston was just one of multiple 'Steam Box' hardware prototypes.
Then in March, Xi3 said that Valve had specifically asked them to make the product. In a lengthy statement sent over at that time, Xi3 further confused things, particularly with this bit:
Xi3's announcement-announcement comes on the heels of Valve's own announcement of 'Steam Machines,' a collection of TV set-top PCs made by different manufacturers that Valve hopes will change the way we play games in the living room. Steam Machines will run Valve's also-just-announced Steam OS, as well use as their new haptic game controller, which they revealed today.
So, yeah, it's an announcement of an announcement, and the timing could just be a coincidence. Whether or not the Piston will be considered an official part of Valve's Steam Machines lineup remains to be seen, as does whether it will utilize Valve's operating system or controller. But hey, the Piston has been an object of mystery for so long that it'll be nice to finally learn more about it. Come Monday, we'll see.
We've got the operating system, we've got the hardware, and now we've got the human interface device. The third prong of Valve's all-out attack on living room gaming is the Steam Controller, a hackable gamepad with dual trackpads, haptic feedback and a touch screen
Two clickable trackpads are the most prominent feature of the Steam Controller. a pair of touch-sensitive pads with resolution approaching that of a desktop mouse. It's the logical halfway point between mouse and gamepad control.
Adding physicality to an otherwise light-touch experience, Valve has outfitted the Steam Controller with advanced haptic feedback, delivering in-game information about "speed, boundaries, threshholds, textures, action confirmations" and more to players' fingertips via highest-bandwidth haptic information channel of any consumer product on the market. 2
The Steam Controller's central screen might seem like a Wii U me-too, but Valve promises an interesting feature that would resolve one of the challenges of playing games that display graphics on a TV while also showing things on a controller screen. When a player touches the screen on the Valve controller, whatever is on that screen will be overlaid on top of whatever is being shown on their TV, " allowing the player to leave their attention squarely on the action, where it belongs," the company said.
The controller will have a legacy mode built-in, allowing it to be configured as a keyboard and mouse. A configuration tool will be made available so the Steam community can create and share their own configurations.
For much of Steam's existence, Microsoft's Xbox 360 controller has proven to be the popular controller for PC gamers who wanted something other than mouse-and-keyboard. The new Steam controller moves many of the buttons of the the 360 controller, drops the d-pad altogether, and trades in sticks for the two big circular trackpads. It's main fealty to the 360 form factor is in its overall shape and the position of its shoulder and trigger buttons.
Valve themselves knocked traditional controllers in today's announcement, stating that "Traditional gamepads force us to accept compromises. We’ve made it a goal to improve upon the resolution and fidelity of input that’s possible with those devices. The Steam controller offers a new and, we believe, vastly superior control scheme
The Steam Controller will be made available first to lucky Steam users who get into the Steam Machines beta test. Steam, Steam, Steam.
More...
In a brief update to the Xi3 site, the hardware makers say that "the wait is over," and that they'll have more info on the modular PC on Monday 9/30 at 11AM Mountain time, or 1PM Eastern. They also shared this image:
The Piston, a small, modular PC designed to be treated like a living-room gaming console, was first revealed in January. At that same time, Xi3 announced that they'd received an investment for the hardware from Valve. Since then, it's become a bit unclear just what role Valve played in the Piston's development—the next day Valve distanced itself from Xi3, saying that the Piston was just one of multiple 'Steam Box' hardware prototypes.
Then in March, Xi3 said that Valve had specifically asked them to make the product. In a lengthy statement sent over at that time, Xi3 further confused things, particularly with this bit:
"For example, the assumption of many in the media has been that Piston is the ‘official' Steam Box. We've never said that and neither has Valve. That hasn't changed. But just because Valve may not ‘currently' have any ‘involvement with any product of (ours)' doesn't mean that such involvement won't exist in the future."
They went on to explain that their vision was counter to Valve's in some ways, including their feeling that Windows OS should be at the core of the machine, though it should be able to run any OS the user chose. Xi3 closed by saying, "What Valve does or doesn't do with its Steam Box will be up to them. So Gabe, it's up to you. The ball is in your court."
Xi3's announcement-announcement comes on the heels of Valve's own announcement of 'Steam Machines,' a collection of TV set-top PCs made by different manufacturers that Valve hopes will change the way we play games in the living room. Steam Machines will run Valve's also-just-announced Steam OS, as well use as their new haptic game controller, which they revealed today.
So, yeah, it's an announcement of an announcement, and the timing could just be a coincidence. Whether or not the Piston will be considered an official part of Valve's Steam Machines lineup remains to be seen, as does whether it will utilize Valve's operating system or controller. But hey, the Piston has been an object of mystery for so long that it'll be nice to finally learn more about it. Come Monday, we'll see.
We've got the operating system, we've got the hardware, and now we've got the human interface device. The third prong of Valve's all-out attack on living room gaming is the Steam Controller, a hackable gamepad with dual trackpads, haptic feedback and a touch screen
Two clickable trackpads are the most prominent feature of the Steam Controller. a pair of touch-sensitive pads with resolution approaching that of a desktop mouse. It's the logical halfway point between mouse and gamepad control.
Adding physicality to an otherwise light-touch experience, Valve has outfitted the Steam Controller with advanced haptic feedback, delivering in-game information about "speed, boundaries, threshholds, textures, action confirmations" and more to players' fingertips via highest-bandwidth haptic information channel of any consumer product on the market. 2
The Steam Controller's central screen might seem like a Wii U me-too, but Valve promises an interesting feature that would resolve one of the challenges of playing games that display graphics on a TV while also showing things on a controller screen. When a player touches the screen on the Valve controller, whatever is on that screen will be overlaid on top of whatever is being shown on their TV, " allowing the player to leave their attention squarely on the action, where it belongs," the company said.
The controller will have a legacy mode built-in, allowing it to be configured as a keyboard and mouse. A configuration tool will be made available so the Steam community can create and share their own configurations.
For much of Steam's existence, Microsoft's Xbox 360 controller has proven to be the popular controller for PC gamers who wanted something other than mouse-and-keyboard. The new Steam controller moves many of the buttons of the the 360 controller, drops the d-pad altogether, and trades in sticks for the two big circular trackpads. It's main fealty to the 360 form factor is in its overall shape and the position of its shoulder and trigger buttons.
Valve themselves knocked traditional controllers in today's announcement, stating that "Traditional gamepads force us to accept compromises. We’ve made it a goal to improve upon the resolution and fidelity of input that’s possible with those devices. The Steam controller offers a new and, we believe, vastly superior control scheme
The Steam Controller will be made available first to lucky Steam users who get into the Steam Machines beta test. Steam, Steam, Steam.
More...
