Seems like some companies think its taking Valve too long to manufacture their own ‘Steam Box’ so they took matters in their own hands. One such company is Xi3 and they have created a concept compact machine to run Steam. To be a little more specific, they are prepping it to run Steam’s “Big Picture Mode”.
Although it is working with “Big Picture Mode”, the device isn’t that big itself. According to Engadget, the device can fit in the palm of your hand and shouldn’t be more of a burden to carry than a can of Mountain Dew (or Diet Coke in my case). In the little case, the device is packing a quad-core AMD APU and is apparently able to support 1TB of storage. It also sips on the electricity with a 40W power supply. It is also a modular device so you can swap components if needed, which makes the device future-proof. However, there aren’t any other details available about the device as of yet.
Now, while this isn’t the official ‘Steam Box’, Valve is actually backing them and will be displaying the machine at their booth along with Xi3. This also goes along with what Gabe Newell, founder of Valve, was saying in regards to third party ‘Steam Boxes’.