The Steambox is Revealed at CES 2013

 At the CES trade show in Las Vegas, a new piece of tech from Xi3 Corporations and Valve has taken the gaming world by surprise. The new modular PC hardware is known as ‘Piston’ and is looking to be a possible contender for the console gaming crown.

Jason Sullivan, founder and chief executive of Xi3, said in a statement “This new development stage product will allow users to take full advantage of their large high-definition TV displays for an amazing computer game experience”.

The set-top box allows gamers to connect up directly to their television and play a large variety of games directly from its intergrated system. With this in place ‘Piston’ is looking to be a contender to keep your eye on in the current rumour storm of the PS4 and Xbox 720.

Many news outlets have speculated that not much information has been released governing this new piece of gaming hardware however in a video posted up today by ETC Daily at Machinima some new information has come to light. The video shows David Politis from Xi3 showing off the new peice of kit in detail never described before with even a look as to what is inside the box.

One of the big announcements was the device using the Linux operating system, however in the same video it is said that the device can also use windows as well as “any X86 operating system”.

So be sure to check out the video and keep an eye out for more information on Piston in the future. What are your thoughts on this new device? Do you think it is going to be the next big step for Valve? Or do you expect that it is going to be nothing more than a little ornament to put next to your PS3 and Xbox 360? Be sure to post your comments below as this little baby from Valve starts to grow.