Valve came out earlier this week and claimed there was no official relationship between it and mini-Piston PC creator, Xi3 and that ultimately the miniature machine wasn't a Steam box. While initially taken aback by this announcement, Xi3 seems to have collected itself now and it has agreed, the Piston isn't a Steam Box, but that the request for its development did come from Valve.

There was some Valve money behind the project too, but ultimately the resulting hardware isn't going to be an official Valve product. Xi3 has pointed out however, that this is a good thing, since it means the Piston can run other game platforms.

According to the TechCrunch rundown, we'll be looking at a base Windows OS for the Piston, though it will be Linux compatible. This is apparently where Xi3 believes it can offer something better than a Steam Box, since it will have more customisation options for consumers.

Pre-order demand has apparently been pretty high since the Piston became available on Monday, so much so in-fact that Xi3 isn't sure if it'll be able to supply all of the little consoles that have been ordered before the end of the year.

Whatever the relationship between Valve and Xi3 was though, it looks like now we'll be given the option of multiple Steam boxes as other companies also get in on the action.

KitGuru Says: What do you think of Xi3 and other companies bringing Steam to the lounge experience? Is it the type of “console” that would interest you PC gamers more than the next-gen machines from Microsoft and Sony?

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