Thursday, 26 September 2013
Video games developer and publisher Valve has reportedly announced SteamOS, which is expected to bring PC gaming into the living room and potentially disrupt the gaming market dominated by PlayStation, Xbox and Wii. The OS code will be made freely available for manufacturers who want to launch their own gaming hardware and the company is anticipated to launch its own machine to run on the OS, believed to be called the Stream Box.
Designed entirely around the company's hugely successful gaming service, the OS will provide seamless access to the over 2,000 titles, and will also allow users to stream games from their main PC or Mac to the living room TV. The idea is to make it easier for families to enjoy PC gaming on their main display – and to make digital gaming itself more accessible. "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," reads the official site. "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."
Family members will also be able to share games from each others' accounts, taking it in turns to play, save games and earn achievements. Furthermore, Valve says it is working with content services to bring streaming music and video to the SteamOS.
Valve has said that the SteamOS has been streamlined for game performance and that developers will be able to release optimised versions of their latest titles for the platform. Its big challenge, then, will be to get committed support from third-party publishers. Steam currently has over 50 million users and the service currently dominates the PC digital gaming landscape – as a brand, it adds considerable currency to the idea of an entertainment-focused living room PC.
