Valve announces operating system Steam OS

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 09/23/2013 07:46 PM | source: | 112 comment(s)

After some teasing, Valve has finally announced yet another piece of its living room takeover — Steam OS. Steam OS is a living room UI that is clearly the spiritual (and more sophisticated successor) to the company’s Big Picture product. Released last year, Big Picture allows any Steam user to play their games on a television with an enhanced UI and controller compatibility.

A big feature of Steam OS is its in-home streaming, which utilizes a home network to run games located on any computer to the TV. Valve has also confirmed the presence of Family Sharing. Announced earlier this month, Family Sharing allows users to share their owned games with friends and family digitally, through the cloud. There will likely be media partnerships for both music and video in the coming months.

It’s been a long time coming, but Steam OS is the first taste of Valve’s efforts to bring the PC experience to the living room. While it’s not yet clear what the next two pieces of puzzle will be until later this week (the next announcement is slated for Wednesday), it’s a good start.

The dividing line between PC and console gamers has only gotten thicker over time, especially as independent developers have found much greater success selling their products on Steam than a proprietary console platform like Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Marketplace. Steam OS will give those developers the opportunity to create a console experience for their games without the difficulty of working with multiple platforms.

It’s a great first step for Valve, but the additional hardware announcements will likely fill in the details of how the company envisions its place in the console world alongside Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo.

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(.)(.)

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Joined: 2010-11-10

#4664409 Posted on: 09/29/2013 03:25 AM

Id love to see a new OS, but if its built solely for gaming purposes, i feel that they're going to have a hard time pushing such a thing, remember, MS is only as big as it is because it's OS was built more for the purposes of Office and school use, with gaming came last, if not completely ignored.

So without a secondary incentive, i think steam OS is not going to be such an easy thing to make a reality to the point of no longer needing Windows for gaming and devs will not like having to go through the process of having to make OpenGL versions of their games along side the console version, i mean as of this upcoming gen, we are closer than ever before at having architectural system unity in the gaming industry between the pc and both consoles, this i feel, is just going to undo everything...

que rubbish ports.

Also, im not a OS expert, im just basing my opinion on what ive read and possibly misunderstood.

sykozis

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Joined: 2008-07-14

#4664452 Posted on: 09/29/2013 07:00 AM

SteamOS has potential.....but it's not something that will take off over night, nor is it something that's going to ever compete with Xbox and PlayStation or Windows. They'd be lucky to compete with Nintendo....

It's going to be an uphill battle and I fully expect the initial release to fail heavily.

The Xi3 Piston is expected to be among the first "Steambox" to hit the market, with a price tag of around $1000USD. At that price, I can game on Windows with a much more capable hardware list than what the Xi3 Piston has. The specs for the Xi3 Piston position it as an entry-level system with a much higher price tag than an entry-level system should ever have. I mean, honestly, it's similarly spec'd to my HTPC...which can't even run WoW at reasonable framerates. It's quite possible that SteamOS will eventually gain traction....but by the time that happens, it's likely to be too late for SteamOS To even matter.

WhiteLightning
Moderator

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#4664486 Posted on: 09/29/2013 09:32 AM

hmm i wonder if the 5treaming part of steamos would run fine through vmware

VultureX
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#4664556 Posted on: 09/29/2013 01:21 PM

Gaming is fragmented enough already, this is just going to add to the platform bias that's already stupidly common. I can see it already, new Valve games being SteamOS exclusive. Because how else are they going to get people to migrate? And having to have a dual boot with SteamOS is worse than EA games being Origin only.

You don't understand Valve at all nor have you read any of their Q&A's about SteamOS. It's an open platform. There will never be any SteamOS exclusive games and they will just as well continue to support everything else that is out there.
You are stuck with egocentric business models (like EA's) in your mind. Valve is going to succeed because it cares about what it's doing rather than just thinking about money like other companies.

There will be countless mods and pieces of software available in the future created by other people than Valve that make SteamOS a better place. In fact Valve even encourages you to do this.

The Laughing Ma
Senior Member

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#4664600 Posted on: 09/29/2013 03:19 PM

I hope it all succeeds just to piss you guys off. You guys could stand to get out of your comfort zone for once. That Windows PC pacifier you all been suckling on has left some of you too stuck in your old grandpa ways to try new things and experiences. I'm just saying it would be very sad if a potentially great gaming experience goes unnoticed due to the time it takes to get accustomed and comfortable with it all because of pure stubbornness like a kid who says he hates a veggie before ever tasting it.

Another person using the tried and tested, you hate it because you're too comfortable with what you have got. It is a shockingly simple retort whe the reality is that the reason so many people aren't jumping head long on the SteamOS bandwagon like giddy teenage girls at a 1D concert is simply because Valve haven't announced anything that is worth getting all giddy about.

At what point did asking 'what exactly is the point of this product' automatically become I am scared of change?

Oh by all means continue to spout off about how open source it will be, how it will be custom built for playing games and how wonderful you think Valve are and as a result anyone questioning it must be afraid of change but right here and right now we have no viable benchmark for the system, all we have to go on is what Valve have told us and for the most part it smells like compromised b*ll**** wrapped up in a thinly veiled scent of O de Gabe.

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