As reported yesterday, after keeping things under wraps for a long time, Valve finally confirmed that they are going to release a brand new piece of tech. However, it appears that they won't be showcasing the new platform at CES after all, which is a mighty bummer since that's what the bloody CES is for. Oh well, at least they said something about the damn thing, which is more than I can say for Half-Life 3.

In case you missed it, here are the speculated (though still not officially confirmed) specs of the Steam Box, which is going to be based on Xi3's X7A system:

• Between 4 and 8 gigabytes of DDR3 RAM
• A quad-core 64-bit, x86-based 32nm processor running at up to 3.2GHz (with 4MB of Level2 Cache)
• An integrated graphics card containing up to 384 programmable cores

The inital price tag of the X7A should begin at $999, with Valve possibly cutting the price according to specifications. The X5A, which uses Linux, will cost $499.

Okay, first of all let me just say straight away, what's with all these X5A and X7A platform names? Did these products go through their marketing department yet? Wouldn't want to go into a store and ask for an entry-level "X234403670 made by Xi3."

Also, here's a video to give you a better idea of what Valve has under its sleeve:

Just to make things absolutely clear, there are two devices in the making here:

• the Piston - the aforementioned system from Xi3
• Steam Box - supposedly a completely seperate device (not the one everyone's been blabbing on about for the past couple of days)

So, once again, Valve refuses to reveal its entire plan, but they're throwing us something, which is okay.

In light of everything we've heard so far, I have to ask the question: why not stick to the PC I own right now?