Hasta La Gadget!

Mark your calendars down, for today is the day where Valve launches the Big Picture mode beta. Just what is Big Picture mode? Well, this is actually a version of Steam that was specially designed to work within the realms of your TV in the living room. Those who have given it a go have nothing but praises for Big Picture, touting some qualities such as it being sleek, intuitive, and groundbreaking.

Of course, it makes perfect sense for Valve not to position nor market “Steam TV” as a video game console replacement, that would just be suicide for a company like them. What Big Picture does is to enlarge the scope of PC gaming to an even wider audience, making it more convenient and suitable for living rooms than in the past.

When Big Picture goes live, all you need to do is push a button, and check out a whole new Steam interface that is said to resemble the Xbox 360’s dashboard sans advertisements and clutter, letting you do just about anything and everything you want on the standard issue Steam, including purchasing games, surf the Internet, and even rely on Steam’s standard in-game overlay to strike up a conversation with your gaming buddies. Do you think Valve’s Big Picture will take off?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Valve to launch non-gaming apps on Steam next month, Gabe Newell thinks Windows 8 is a “catastrophe”, which might explain Steam for Linux,

Early last year, Valve mentioned it was working on something called Big Picture mode for Steam, an alternative user interface with controller support designed specifically for use on televisions. According to Gabe Newell, the distribution services’ couch-ready UI is almost upon us. “We should have both Linux and 10-foot betas out there fairly quickly,” he told Geoff Keighley in the latest episode of GTTV, noting that the interface would be available on both the current iteration of Steam and the upcoming Linux version. Newell said that Valve has been showing the interface to hardware manufacturers, but ultimately feels that the community will decide its fate. “I think customers will say ‘this is really great,’ or they’ll say it’s another interesting but not a valuable contribution, fairly quickly.” Check out the interview for yourself (and the full episode) after the break.

Continue reading Steam to debut Big Picture beta soon, make couch potatoes of PC gamers

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Steam to debut Big Picture beta soon, make couch potatoes of PC gamers originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Aug 2012 00:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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