On Saturday, we reported that Xi3, the PC maker that"s developing tiny PCs for both work and play, had begun to take pre-orders for its PISTON gaming PC. Most of the press about the PISTON PC before this weekend has centered on its small size, along with Xi3"s investment from Valve.
At a presentation at SXSW this weekend, Xi3 showed off something new; the user interface for the PISTON. The company said it would not be showing the video to anyone outside the SXSW crowd but Polygon managed to capture some off-screen video of the presentation.
The video shows that the menu is highly customizable. Xi3 has designed it so that users can select which PC gaming service they want to connect to by clicking on the "Gaming" selection. In other words, if you select "Steam" for the gaming tab, it will launch Steam every time you click on gaming menu selection.
The UI also allows user to do the same for their favorite streaming video and audio service, along with chat and even home automation services. The video even showed that users can select which color the menu selections will have.
Again, pre-orders are now being taken for the PISTON gaming PC. Normally, the price would start at $999 but from now until March 17th Xi3 will shave $100 off the order and throw in a free copy of Microsoft"s Windows 7 operating system. The PISTON is scheduled to ship by the end of 2013.
Source: Polygon