Valve Announce Steam Operating System

Valve have just announced their plans to extend their Steam service, and with it PC gaming, into your living room. Previously, they had Big Picture mode which allowed for a gamepad-controlled layout akin to the PS3’s XMB or Xbox Dashboard, but now they’re developing a Steam OS.

It’s based on Linux, designed for TVs in the living room and will be available soon, free of charge.

As we’ve been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we’ve come to the conclusion that the
environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself.
SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen.
It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.

It will be completely standalone software, which means developers will have to make Steam OS native versions of their games – presumably Linux versions. Don’t worry, though, as you’ll be able to stream Windows and Mac games over your network from another PC.

They’re also moving into music, TV and movies rather than just games, planning to bring this content to Steam. This all ties in with the recently announced family sharing options, and there’ll be more ways to filter games for individual family members.

So, not quite the SteamBox we were expecting (though that might be announced later in the week – there are still two announcements to come on Wednesday and Friday) and still a bit more complicated than buying a dedicated console – but the streaming sounds ace, meaning you won’t need an expensive and big device under your TV. I wonder if it’d work with a Raspberry Pi? If so, I’m in.

Source: Steam