Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The strange and sordid saga of Xi3′s Steambox/apparently not a Steambox/grapefruit of the fuuuuuuuuture slogs on. You’ll remember that Valve publicly denounced the little-PC-that-could (cost $1000) yesterday, which came as a strange turn of events after it was first announced with an investment from the very same Steam-powered empire. Right hand, meet left? Or maybe this was all an evil plot hatched by none other than Nega-Newell, who’s spent the past couple years masquerading as the real deal and making a series of baffling decisions. It sounds just as plausible as anything else, I think, given that Xi3′s now revealed that the rabbit hole runs even deeper. Apparently, it was actually Valve who commissioned them to make the damn thing in the first place.

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Hey RPSers! I have had three cups of tea, EXCESSIVE amounts of sugar and have bags of energy for news today: and here is the first story I have to report. Xi3 have announced that their apparently “uniquely shaped, grapefruit-size” PISTON, a system optimized for games on high-def television monitors, will be available for preorder at SXSW until the final day at 11:59 p.m. CST on March 17th.

The so-called “Steam box” console – which is a third party effort and certainly not Valve’s own Steam box, which is yet to be revealed – will be available to SXSWers for $100 off the actual, ludicrous $999.99 price.

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Gabe Newell doesn’t just spend his time making himself look like Austrian Santa Claus – he also heads up gaming software titan Valve. And, soon, gaming hardware titan Valve. Their ‘Steambox‘ PC-as-a-console concept isn’t a secret anymore, and indeed Newell now claims the first units might well be in the wild within the next three to four months.
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The Steam Box drama is now reaching soap-opera-esque levels. First, Xi3 announced that it’s partnered with Valve to birth a bouncing baby space grapefruit, then Valve noted that plenty of other prototypes are waiting in the wings, and now Gabe Newell’s emerged from the shadows to chat up Valve’s own Linux-powered, biometrically-controlled Steam Box. What’s next, I ask you? Will we discover that Half-Life 2: Episode 3 never died, but instead got shipwrecked on an island/overwrought metaphor/the moon, conveniently acquired amnesia, and came to believe that it, too, was a Steam Box? Or is some contrived, out-of-left-field twist going to reveal that our closest friends were Steam Boxes all along? It’s just too much, everyone. I’m not sure if I can deal with it.

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Hey everyone, you’re never going to believe this. The Steam Box? It’s totally real. I know, right? I mean, a series of totally unsubstantiated rumors from Valve alphabeard Gabe Newell was dubious at best, and Big Picture mode spent so much time in development for no reason whatsoever. But somehow – completely unexpectedly – we’re now here, watching Valve and mini-PC maker Xi3 team up to reveal “an integrated system that exceeds the capabilities of leading game consoles, but can fit in the palm of your hand.” Xi3 also compared the device’s physical size to that of a grapefruit, meaning that this is yet another mind-blowing technological advancement I’ll have to worry about accidentally eating.

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Important post-weekend question. While speaking to Kotaku at the VGAs this weekend, did Gabe Newell:

A) Confirm that Half Life 3 will be a Wii U exclusive.

B) Reveal Valve’s plans to release a Steam Box that will replace desktop PCs entirely and force us all to sit on a couch for the rest of our lives.

C) Request ‘a little off the top’, mistakenly believing that he had walked into a particularly loud and very well-sponsored barber’s.

There’s only one way to find out – follow me down the Monday morning rabbit hole.

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