Valve has just unveiled SteamOS, a completely free PC operating system designed to cut gamers' ties with Windows and bring Steam into the living room.
The announcement, which had been teased with a countdown page over the weekend, looks set to be the first of three leading up to a possible reveal of the Steambox console.
SteamOS is based on Linux, and will use Big Picture Mode extensively to let gamers browse through their Steam games collection easily from the sofa.
You'll be able to stream games from a Mac or PC, with SteamOS picking up any networked computers and streaming games to your big screen TV. multimedia services are promised, so we're expecting catch-up TV, on-demand video streaming and music subscription services as well as Steam's integrated web browser.
Family Sharing will also feature heavily, letting your family members access your games when you aren't playing, without having to give away your passwords.
Based on the limited information Valve has released so far, SteamOS is very much a work in progress. The official SteamOS web page currently reads: "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".
Major publishers are apparently working closely with Valve to support SteamOS, with the launch site promising that "hundreds of great games are already running natively on SteamOS. Watch for announcements in the coming weeks about all the AAA titles coming natively to SteamOS in 2014".
We'll have to wait another two days to learn the second stage of Valve's living room push - a new countdown timer has already started ticking to Wednesday at 6PM UK time. We'll bring you the details once they arrive.
Andoid Games
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