Valve's first announcement is the SteamOS
posted:
9/23/2013 2:24:00 PM
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Today is the first of three announcements coming from Valve concerning pushing their products into the living room space. First up is the announcement of the SteamOS. You say, another operating system? Why yes, it's an operating system that's Steam centric.
SteamOS is Linux based and it will be free to download. It should turn a box into all things Steam, if that's what you want. It's designed to make the most out of your hardware and not deal with some of the overheard that's prevalent in other operating systems if all you want to do is game. Granted, there's a limited offering for Linux compatible games, but Valve's big hits will be Linux compatible and there are some from other companies that are too.
A few new features are coming to the SteamOS and to clients as well. One is Family Sharing, which they mentioned a while ago. Something new though will be the ability to stream your games to another PC. Like with the NVIDIA Shield, you'll be able to hook into your main PC from another computer and play games hosted on your primary computer.
So, while this isn't announced, I can see where the SteamOS can come into play here. Since it's Linux based and will be lightweight, imagine a very small device like a micro-console, running a SteamOS in your household. Plug it into any TV and pair up some controllers to it. Now, you'll be able to stream games from your main PC to it and play on any HDMI capable TV. I can see this working in my setup where I have a living room Steam box and a main PC downstairs. Rather than installing the games on both boxes, my client in the living room will just stream from my main PC and I'll have access to all the games installed on that machine, rather than having to do two installs and forcing one box to log out of Steam when I want to use it. Pretty cool I have to say.
So, that's the first announcement for today. We have until Wednesday for the next and most likely Friday for the last. SteamOS may not be that exciting, but I can see some great abilities in it.
SteamOS is Linux based and it will be free to download. It should turn a box into all things Steam, if that's what you want. It's designed to make the most out of your hardware and not deal with some of the overheard that's prevalent in other operating systems if all you want to do is game. Granted, there's a limited offering for Linux compatible games, but Valve's big hits will be Linux compatible and there are some from other companies that are too.
A few new features are coming to the SteamOS and to clients as well. One is Family Sharing, which they mentioned a while ago. Something new though will be the ability to stream your games to another PC. Like with the NVIDIA Shield, you'll be able to hook into your main PC from another computer and play games hosted on your primary computer.
So, while this isn't announced, I can see where the SteamOS can come into play here. Since it's Linux based and will be lightweight, imagine a very small device like a micro-console, running a SteamOS in your household. Plug it into any TV and pair up some controllers to it. Now, you'll be able to stream games from your main PC to it and play on any HDMI capable TV. I can see this working in my setup where I have a living room Steam box and a main PC downstairs. Rather than installing the games on both boxes, my client in the living room will just stream from my main PC and I'll have access to all the games installed on that machine, rather than having to do two installs and forcing one box to log out of Steam when I want to use it. Pretty cool I have to say.
So, that's the first announcement for today. We have until Wednesday for the next and most likely Friday for the last. SteamOS may not be that exciting, but I can see some great abilities in it.
