Valve’s Big Picture software was their first move into the living room of Steam patrons. Gabe Newell believes that this is a trend that will only continue to grow in the coming years, with living room PCs set to arrive from more and more companies. If you think that Valve is going to miss out on this opportunity, think again. In a recent interview with Kotaku, Newell explains that his company is working on bettering the Big Picture experience, which has already seen widespread adoption from Steam users. This fine tuning will open the doors for PC gamers to leave their desks behind, and take their gaming to an arena long confined to consoles.
“I think in general that most customers and most developers are going to find that [the PC is] a better environment for them,” said Newell in the interview. “Cause they won’t have to split the world into thinking about ‘why are my friends in the living room, why are my video sources in the living room different from everyone else?’ So in a sense we hopefully are going to unify those environments.”
According to the website, Valve is looking to compete head on with next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft by offering a Steam Machine that will achieve this unification. Newell explains it as hardware in a “very controlled environment”, and sounds much like a PC that serves the solitary purpose of delivering digital media like that found on Steam.
If Valve is looking at giving consumers a viable alternative to console gaming, this Steam console better hurry up. Â It’s widely expected that Sony and Microsoft are both readying consoles for a 2013 announcement and release.
