Steam to release a linux based OS for the living room

Looks like people behind Steam (most popular gaming platforms through which PC gamers buy, interact and play games) are about to make a dash for a dedicated operating system. Project is running full steam ahead to create a new living room PC platform with a brand spanking new OS called SteamOS.

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

The website states:

As we’ve been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we’ve come to the conclusion that the
environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself.
SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen.
It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.

This is a development that has been some time in the making I must say. With various console platforms around, some console based gamers have been saying that the key area where they prefer console over PC is in fact it’s in their living room, connected to their big LCD TV. This is what Steam seems to be looking to cover to bridge that gap.

Nvidia is also talking up 4K gaming and we all know that PCs are now significantly more powerful than consoles already and this will be a lot more evident when we start seeing mass produced/sold 4K TVs. PC PowerPlay article in Australia has an interesting read about state of things to come courtesy of Tony Tomasi’s thoughts in a recent interview. These 4K TVs have already been on sale in some countries for a while and the economies of scale will no doubt see the price lower into acceptable levels for ordinary people to be able to afford one. There are already 50” 4K TVs on sale in USA for $1500! PC GPUs in a living room PC look like the perfect fit for this new resolution standard.

Interesting times ahead! Time for all component manufacturers to thing about small and quiet high powered living room design PCs I think.