Xi3's Steam Box contender Piston up for pre-orders

Micro-PC manufacturers Xi3 has opened up pre-orders for its Steam-integrated box Piston,with the PC-console hybrid starting at $999.99.

Open from now at the SXSW gaming festival until its close on March 17th, pre-orders will see the first batch of micro-PC owners getting their machines in time for Christmas 2013.

According to the company, this move comes as the console's media coverage suggests demand will exceed supply.

"Given the amount of awards, media attention and gamer interest the Piston Console has generated since it was unveiled at CES 2013 in January, we've become seriously concerned that we will not be able to meet the demand for Piston Consoles this year," said Jason Sullivan, founder, president and CEO of Xi3 Corporation.

Sullivan says that despite the strong popularity of both traditional gaming consoles and gaming PCs, there is strong demand for device that captures "the best of both worlds".

He continued: "We believe our Piston Consoles do exactly that - deliver the beauty and small size of consoles with the upgrade-ability of computers."

James Lee

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James Lee is a freelance writer and analyst with extensive experience in the technology, media and games sectors. For the past few years he has provided content for internationally published industry reports, SEO companies and a variety of news-focused websites. Prior to this, James was responsible for covering news and producing in-depth features for GamesIndustry.biz while occasionally contributing to its sister-site. Eurogamer.net. In addition to this he has contributed to other notable sites such as CVG.co.uk, Edge-Online and DigitalSpy.