With us having a game that has now been Greenlit for Steam distribution we are taking a special interest in the three Steam announcements that are taking place this week. The first of these announcements has now passed and Valve have announced 'Steam OS' a free operating system that people can put onto their PC. It is an extension of their Big Picture Mode that they introduced last year which basically makes it so you can play PC games on your TV in a more friendly and intuitive way, all controlled with a gamepad.
Steam OS means that you don't need Windows on that PC as Steam OS will automatically take the user into Big Picture mode! The OS is built upon Linux which does mean that not a lot of the catalogue will run on the platform straight away but Valve also talk about the ability to stream any other Steam content from your Mac or PC that you have elsewhere in the house, plus it seems that now there is a real reason to support it, Linux support is likely to go through the roof. You can find the full announcement here: http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/
Everyone fully expects one of the further two announcements to be Valves Steam Box which would be a standalone piece of hardware that runs the new OS. This could have a pretty interesting knock on affect for Nitrome as we would suddenly be in a position where our Flightless game on completion would be available on what is essentially a console. Pretty exciting stuff!
So what do you think? Is this a big deal for the gaming industry or do you think it is hype that will quickly die away? What else do you think Valve are going to announce in their other two announcements? What do you think the knock on effects are for Nitrome? Now that we have comments we finally have a place to chat about such things! :)
