Valve announces the Steam OS
Posted by 
September 24, 2013 •
Steam will soon be getting it’s very own operating system as Valve officially announces the Steam OS.
According to Valve’s press release, SteamOS is designed for living rooms that “combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen.” So yes, sooner or later, PC couch gaming will no longer be an issue.
So what does having SteamOS give you exactly, well:
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.
And most importantly for games, Valve says they’ve already got hundreds of games that will come to the new operating system next year. Hopefully that means when it’s available, we’ll be able to access our Steam catalog via the mentioned “in-home streaming.” If that hasn’t sinked in, yes you still need a dedicated machine to run your games on.
And for the most important part: pricing. As with Steam, SteamOS will be available soon as a free download for users and as a freely licensable operating system for manufacturers.
more info via Steam
