Last year Valve brought out "Big Picture"- designed to help people integrate their steam library into their living room, allowing people to play games, chat with friends & browse the net. Over the last week they've made a trilogy() of announcements- the release of Steam Machines & the Steam Operating System in 2014, as well as the Steam controller
SteamOS
Valve's new home-grown operating system, built around the hugely popular digital distribution platform. By using linux they claim to have made significant performance improvements & are boasting a handful of features
Free
In-home streaming of your steam library from PC to your steamOS machine
Family sharing
Media services
Significant performance increases
Steam Machines
Its a console, but a Valve console.
These will be available in 2014, with a variety of different models available from different manufacturers, natively running SteamOS and supporting every game game available on steam. they will be customisable and you can build your own "box" and use SteamOS on it.
A Valve prototype is available,free of charge for testing - for 300 Steam users,30~ chosen based on past community contributions, the rest randomly selected. These will be shipped this year and include a controller.
THE HARDWARE BETA ELIGIBILITY QUEST:
Before October 25, log in to Steam and then visit your quest page to track your current status towards beta test eligibility
1. Join the Steam Universe community group
2. Agree to the Steam Hardware Beta Terms and Conditions
3. Make 10 Steam friends (if you haven't already)
4. Create a public Steam Community profile (if you haven't already)
5. Play a game using a gamepad in Big Picture mode
The Controller
Designed to work with every game on steam- even those without controller support, featuring dual trackpads, haptic feedback, a touch screen & a legacy mode that allows the controller to act as a keyboard and mouse.(you can also share button configurations online), it also entirely "hackable" - with valve planning to make tools available "that will enable users to participate in all aspects of the experience, from industrial design to electrical engineering"
Thoughts? who's getting one?
Valve generally does things right so i'm looking forward to what it can do and the impact it will have on the market, though i probably wont get one.
Here are the specifications for Valve's 300 prototypes.
The 300 prototype units will ship with the following components:
GPU: some units with NVidia Titan, some GTX780, some GTX760, and some GTX660
CPU: some boxes with Intel : i7-4770, some i5-4570, and some i3
RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600 (CPU), 3GB DDR5 (GPU)
Storage: 1TB/8GB Hybrid SSHD
Power Supply: Internal 450w 80Plus Gold
Dimensions: approx. 12 x 12.4 x 2.9 in high
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