Valve has some interesting plans for Steam’s future. Gabe Newell recently stated that they plan to bring Steam to your living room with a new user interface (UI) dubbed Big Picture UI mode.
Steam and Steamworks continues to evolve to keep up with customer and developer demands for new services and content. Support for in-game item trading prompted the exchange of over 19 million items. Support for Free to Play (FTP) games, launched in June, has spurred the launch of 18 FTP titles on Steam, with more coming in 2012. Looking forward, we are preparing for the launch of the Big Picture UI mode, which will allow gamers to experience Steam on large displays and in more rooms of the house.
While it’s completely possible to hook up your PC to any large TV and use Steam right now, this new UI will improve the experience and make it more suited to that type of environment. No, this isn’t the first time Valve has mention such plans. This goes back to as early as February of last year. However, it seems that 2012 will be the year that this UI will be implemented into Steam.
Sources: bluesnews.com, mtv.com
Sounds like a good idea to me. Wireless KB/M could be the future of PC gaming.
Anyone else wondering why steam hasn’t gotten a built in streaming movie service?
This sounds like an interesting idea to me. Valve definitely has a phenomenal track record when it comes to innovative PC gaming distribution, so I am hopeful that this idea will be a success.
Sounds excellent to me! Now I can play PC games on the couch with mouse and keyboard…and uh…a really long HDMI cable. I’m putting the PC near the couch since it’s quiet enough now and still stays cool.