The push to bring PC gaming to your living room is on! Valve announced Wednesday that its much-anticipated SteamOS operating system will become available on Friday, December 13, and the company will ship out prototype Steam Machines to 300 lucky U.S. users on the same day.
Steam Machines are console-like gaming PCs, and SteamOS is the beating heart at their core. Building on the blocks laid by Steam's Big Picture mode and its 10 foot-interface, the Linux-based SteamOS was built specifically for use with far-away HDTVs. As we said when SteamOS was first announced, Windows is clumsy to operate sitting on a couch across the room. SteamOS should make it easier to get into games and install drivers in a living room environment.
The joystick-less Steam Controller that Valve created for use with Steam Machines supposedly plays nicer with PC control layouts than traditional gamepads.
The tweaking in SteamOS extends beyond the interface, however. Valve says that it's "achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing, and we're now targeting audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level."
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