SteamOS Brings PC Games to the Living Room | TechTree.com

SteamOS Brings PC Games to the Living Room

Will start off by streaming games from a PC/Mac gaming rig; SteamOS specific games coming next year.

 

This week is quite important for Steam, who has two announcements lined up after its reveal of SteamOS today. It is Valve's very own gaming-centric operation system that marries Steam's digital distribution platform with the Linux. Just like Valve's last big announcement, the Big Picture, the SteamOS too reflects Valve's eagerness to bring gaming to the living room.

The OS will be free and, as per the company's marketing campaign, "combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen". Not much has been revealed about the OS, but it is completely licence free and open to hardware manufacturers to implement in their customised products.

Plonking SteamOS into any hardware, or your own PC, will allow the OS to run any Steam-based Mac or PC game streamed from your gaming PC. This sounds like a complicated way to bring PC and Mac games to the living room, especially when it's just a matter of hooking up your PC with a long HDMi cable. However, this will make more sense when packed in a tiny USB dongle that can be attached to the TV to pull Steam games from your gaming rig.

Although Valve hasn't said much about the exact technical nature of streaming, its has partnered with Miracast, which is a WiFi coalition dealing with wireless HDTV transmission.  The videogame streaming seems to be quite similar to that found in NVIDIA's Shield handheld console. In other words, as of now this means that the Steam-enabled PC sends video over to the SteamOS device in the living room.

"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," elaborates Valve about its efforts to make the real-time gameplay streaming experience smooth.

However, gaming isn't just restricted to streaming. Valve has boasted of "hundreds of games" poised to be ported to the new OS by next year. This includes AAA titles as well. "Game developers are already taking advantage of these gains as they target SteamOS for their new releases," claims Valve about third-party developers that will be creating games from scratch for the platform itself. Titles such as Metro: Last Light, Rome II: Total War, Trine 2, and Football Manager 2013 have already been listed.

There are still two more announcements left to be made to that effect. I will be surprised if one of those isn't a hardware platform. In the meantime, Valve has additionally announced four new features common for both SteamOS and the existing Steam platform.  This includes streaming, family sharing, parental restrictions, and options for movies, music, and other media.


TAGS: Gaming

 
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