14 DAY TRIAL // The first of the three announcements concerning Steam and the living room has been revealed by Valve, in the form of the SteamOS, an operating system dedicated to the Steam digital distribution service, running on the Linux structure.
Valve wants to make Steam a staple of a gamer's living room and, after launching the Big Picture mode last year, it's now making three big announcements.
The first of these three is the SteamOS, a special operating system that's dedicated to Valve's Steam platform, made using Linux and targeting living room and gaming PCs.
Check out the three core features below, via the official page.
Living room & Steam Finally, you don’t have to give up your favorite games, your online friends, and all the Steam features you love just to play on the big screen. SteamOS, running on any living room machine, will provide access to the best games and user-generated content available.
Fast forward
In SteamOS, we have achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing, and we’re now targeting audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level. Game developers are already taking advantage of these gains as they target SteamOS for their new releases.
Cooperating system
Steam is not a one-way content broadcast channel, it’s a collaborative many-to-many entertainment platform, in which each participant is a multiplier of the experience for everyone else. With SteamOS, “openness” means that the hardware industry can iterate in the living room at a much faster pace than they’ve been able to. Content creators can connect directly to their customers. Users can alter or replace any part of the software or hardware they want. Gamers are empowered to join in the creation of the games they love. SteamOS will continue to evolve, but will remain an environment designed to foster these kinds of innovation.
SteamOS will also bring a streaming system that allows a dedicated gaming PC to stream gameplay via the local network to a living room PC that's running the new system.
More details about all these features are set to debut soon enough.