Thousands of games, millions of users. Everything you love about Steam.
Available soon as a free operating system designed for the TV and the living room.
That above is the quote appearing at the top of the SteamOS as of Valve’s announcement a short while ago. Yes, you read that right, Valve is producing SteamOS for living room based machines; oh and yes it’s free.
Since late last year, Valve has been making great strides to bring PC gaming out of the bedrooms and offices of our homes and into the living room; once thought to be the home solely of consoles. There first foray into this was with Steam Big Picture, their controller-based overhaul for Steam, which launched last December. Now the company is making further strides to solidify a foothold in the living room starting in 2014.
SteamOS, the next salvo is the bid to occupy the living room, is a Linux-based operating system that utilizes what already exists with Steam to give living room PCs further functionality, allowing also for a better pipeline between consumer and manufacturer. Moving along with this idea, Valve is launching several new feature that will be both available in SteamOS and the base Steam client that most of us already use:
In-home Streaming
You can play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, too. Just turn on your existing computer and run Steam as you always have – then your SteamOS machine can stream those games over your home network straight to your TV!
Music, TV, Movies
We’re working with many of the media services you know and love. Soon we will begin bringing them online, allowing you to access your favorite music and video with Steam and SteamOS.
Family Sharing
In the past, sharing Steam games with your family members was hard. Now you can share the games you love with the people you love. Family Sharing allows you to take turns playing one another’s games while earning your own Steam achievements and saving your individual game progress to the Steam cloud.
Family Options
The living-room is family territory. That’s great, but you don’t want to see your parents’ games in your library. Soon, families will have more control over what titles get seen by whom, and more features to allow everyone in the house to get the most out of their Steam libraries.
Overall, the prospect of Valve launching their own OS is something that should be of interest to all gamers, whether they play on PC, console, or are in fact looking for a living room option.
Make sure to come back to GNN in just under 48 hours, as Valve has more in store for changes to living room gaming to come, and we will be reporting on it then.
Check out tomorrow’s episode of Constantly Calibrating, where we’ll be discussing this in at least slightly further detail.
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"A man of many talents; Joshua is a gamer, writer, Sith Lord in training and a wannabe Time Lord. Assuming the mantle of Director of Gaming for Geek News Network, Joshua has made it his goal to bring the gaming division of GNN forward.
Will he succeed? Well, only by keeping up to date with the GNN gaming division will you be able to find out.
You can read more of Joshua’s semi-regular thoughts on Twitter @BearPunch. He also co-hosts the GNN Gaming Podcast and the ”Constantly Calibrating Podcast.
Joshua can be contacted at [email protected] for more information on GNN Gaming.”
