Valve today announced a new gaming OS which is based on Linux, called SteamOS. The entire operating system is built around Steam itself, and will be available for free to the public in the months to come.
Earlier last week, Valve’s Co-Founder, Gabe Newell announced that the company would bring a new kind of OS dedicated to gaming, and today, here we are, with some more details about the SteamOS. Talking about the new OS, Gabe says:
SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen. It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.
Valve also reveals that they’ve achieved a significant performance increases in graphics processing with the new OS, and that they audio performance and reductions in the input latency have been improved with SteamOS. Creating SteamOS was important for a company like Valve, which believes in giving the best experience for its gamers. The company would have a good control over the OS, which would ultimately enhance the user experience in the living room for gaming.
With this move, Valve is starting to look at the Operating System Platforms with a whole new view. An OS dedicated for gaming is pretty huge, and that Valve has been taking sometime to provide support for some popular platforms like Mac and Windows. Valve has thousands of games which could run only on Windows or Mac, and they have been thinking about fixing this compatibility for a while now.
Valve is expected to release the SteamOS to the mainstream users sometime in 2014, and that they company is testing the OS with hundreds of games on the new platform.
SteamOS will be featuring some of the most important needs for gaming professionals. SteamOS would feature an in-game chat with friends, friends-list and family sharing with multiple Steam accounts, Steam Workshop add-ons and marketplaces with which the company would get some revenue. But that does not stop there. Valve has also revealed that they are working with a lot of media services which wold enable them to get music, TV and movie streaming services to the OS.
Valve’s Steam Box is also expected to revolve around this SteamOS, and that we would get some more information in the months to come. But then, looks like Valve still has something to announce. The company has put up a countdown page, that ends on Wednesday 1pm ET. Valve has announced only one (SteamOS) of their three big news now, let’s see what the company has got for Wednesday.