Set to be available soon, SteamOS will be free forever and will help to bring better PC gaming into the living room. Not only does Valve claim to have achieved significant performance increases in graphics performance (and is working now on audio and reducing input latecy) but you can also stream games from your PC or Mac to a living room "machine" running SteamOS.
That in-home streaming feature might help some PC gamers to move to their HD TV, but the technical details jkust aren't available now. Gamers will likely have questions about whether they can use existing controllers in this setup or maybe concerns about the limits of Wi-Fi streaming.
Valve also promises that SteamOS will provide entertainment from the "media services you know and love," which to us means at least Netflix, but again, there is no confirmation on any service yet.
Family Sharing allows you to easily share games with family members, allowing you to take turns playing one another's games while earning your own Steam achievements and saving your individual game progress to the Steam cloud.
Family Options also provides content control.
Right now, details are sketchy about SteamOS, but Valve is set to make another couple of announcements this week, so stay tuned.
Written by: James Delahunty @ 23 Sep 2013 17:42
