So How 'bout That Steam OS?

It looks like the long rumored Steambox may finally come to fruition with Valve’s announcement this week of a Steam OS. Apparently it’s going to be a full, Linux based operating system that’s optimized for game performance and media sharing. According to the official website, this operating system is being designed from the ground up to be a living room operating system with streaming options, developer support, and more. No hardware partnership has been announced yet, but this seems like a natural first step toward a first party Valve box.

The Steam OS is a somewhat unique product, as there isn't really any competition for “living room TV” computers. There are consoles, sure, but consoles are closed systems, designed to play specific games. You can’t just install the Xbox operating system on a PC and hook it up to your TV. There are also smart TVs, which offer video and music streaming options, but those are bare-bones systems that are basically just apps for your TV. The Steam OS is going to be a full operating system, which will presumable have all the features of base Linux available underneath the Steam shell, so the system will be as complex or customizable as you want it to be. That leaves room for a lot of flexibility and space for upgrades in the future.

It isn’t unheard of for people to have gaming computers hooked up to their TVs. Steam launched their Big Picture feature at Christmas time last year to target those people specifically. This OS could be a step in the right direction for those people, since presumable the entire OS could be controlled with a gamepad, similar to how Big Picture works, but it will be interesting to see how many people are willing to buy or build computers for that purpose when the OS launches. Luckily the OS will be 100% free, which eliminates the large cost of buying an operating system for a living room PC, but even with that benefit it seems unlikely that average consumers will be willing to build or buy their own living room PCs just for gaming.

I’m one of those people that has a living room PC, and thanks to a 30ft HDMI cable I can play all my Steam games on the glorious big screen. When Steam OS launches I’ll probably look into setting up a dual boot to at least try it out, but whether or not it becomes a permanent part of my setup will depend on how good the streaming capabilities are. If a Steam OS PC with minimal running hardware can act as a streaming box, and stream games in real time from my main PC I’ll buy one for every room in the house.