Valve Unveils Steam OS

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Valve has revealed SteamOS; their way of “bringing Steam to the living room.” Valve states that SteamOS “combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen.”

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell had once stated that gaming on Windows 8 is “a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.” He also stated that Linux is held back by its lack of games. Valve hopes that bringing Steam to Linux will bring other developers to create games for Linux despite the difficulties they had porting Left 4 Dead 2 to the system.

 

Features for SteamOS are as follows:

  • 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.

There are currently 198 games compatible with Linux since Steam has been made available to Linux users in February. Valve has three announcements regarding SteamOS, this being the first. The second of the three announcements is going to be revealed on Wednesday, September 25 at 10AM PST.