SteamOS Announced

[DZComposer]

Valve has announced that they are rolling their own Linux Distro to be called SteamOS.

I had a feeling this was coming for quite some time. Valve's sudden embracing of Linux combined with an apparent desire to make their own machine, Big Picture, and the recent family features makes me want to quote The Heavy: "Is not big surprise."

Interestingly, it looks like you will be able to stream games that are not Linux-based to your steam box from your PC. Not sure how the tech works, though. What would be awesome, though, is if your gaming rig did the heavy-lifting. If this were the case, you could build an el-cheapo machine to run SteamOS as a thin client. Of course I do not know if that is how it will work.

Given how close Valve has been with Ubuntu, my guess is that it is based on Ubuntu, but that is merely conjecture.

It is worth noting that the focus of this OS is for living room use. Basically, Valve is giving you the software stack to build your own gaming console. How it works in a traditional PC setup remains to be seen.

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

SteamOS was the first of three announcements on the living room front.

The symbols O [O ] and O+O are used on the page.

O is the first announcement, and thus seems to represent SteamOS.

[O ] seems to be SteamOS in a box. Hardware perhaps?

O+O implies either collaboration or connectivity between SteamOS users.

[Arashikage]

I hope this will mean cross compatibility with PC Steam games, because that would be wizard.

[DZComposer]

I hope this will mean cross compatibility with PC Steam games, because that would be wizard.

If they're Linux games, they'll run natively. If not, you can stream them from your gaming PC, however that works.

[Arashikage]

I mean like, cross compatibility, like if someone is playing CS:GO on their SteamOS platform, I wanna join them on my Windows platform with my copy of CS:GO

[Gestalt]

[O ]= staem machines!

 

protip: Reload the page when the countdown is over, Don't continuously spam the symbol wondering why nothing is happens.

 

O+O = tf3 obviously. I kid. Okay maybe hl3?

[Scott7]

[O ]= staem machines!

 

protip: Reload the page when the countdown is over, Don't continuously spam the symbol wondering why nothing is happens.

 

O+O = tf3 obviously. I kid. Okay maybe hl3?

 

The speculation of of a game seems kind of irrelevant in this case. I mean, sure It's always a possibility that they'll announce a new game to go along with the new Hardware, but from how everything's been presented so far, it doesn't seem like It's leaning toward a release of a long awaited title. It fit's more along the line's of what they've been talking about at confrences over the last year, which is expanding themselves to the living room.

To me, I think that goal is a smart move when you consider how most retail computer's (Excluding Macs of course) are being sold with windows 8.

[DZComposer]

I was right about [O ]. Yay!

O+O is a tougher one. I though connectivity, but then can't you already do that with Steam? Perhaps you will be able to link Steam devices together and share content between them? But, Steam is a unified account anyway. I'm kind of stumped, but watch it be something simple enough to make me facepalm for not seeing it. lol

[Gestalt]

 
This gamepad design looks much more radical than those to be shipped with next-gen consoles...Definitely wasn't expecting more hardware.

 

I also have to know the price tag we're talking about.

[DoctorAllosaurus]

I'm not sure what to think of this thing, on the one hand yes it's probably really good for fps games, but on the other it's probably crap for stuff like Rogue Legacy or Skullgirls.

[DZComposer]

Y B

X A

Dammit, can we fucking standardize this?

Nintendo:

Y X

B A

Xbox:

X Y

A B

Playstation

□ Δ

X O

Steam:

Y B

X A

Hell, let's have someone make this one while we're at it:

Y A

B X

Y U NO USE SAME BUTTON ORDER?

I'm not a huge fan of the button layout on this thing. It seems like the face buttons will be awkward to use.

[Icy]

Very very interesting. I remember reading a rumor about Valve developing a new type of input a few months ago. I got really excited because, thinking about it...

We've had the standard mouse & keyboard AND controller design for nearly 20 years now.

 

Way overdue for someone to develop a new type of input.

 

I have to say it looks good. I don't know about the button layout yet, but Valve know how to do things, so I won't question it. Reading their long page about it was very reassuring. It will have a lot of cool features.

I can't wait to try it. Although, my mouse and keyboard work just fine... But hey! You never know, something like this might really challenge that.