The, now already famous, counter that has been spinning down at Valve's teaser site has reached an end last evening revealing first of three big announcements from Valve, the Linux-based SteamOS. According to Valve, the SteamOS combines "the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen” and although it did not reveal much information regarding it, it definitely sounds quite interesting.

To be available "soon" for free, the SteamOS aims to bring gaming to your living room and according to Valve, there are already hundreds of Steam games that run natively on the new OS and bunch of other AAA titles are expected to be announced shortly. Valve notes that the SteamOS will bring access to best games and user-generated content to any living room system.

Although there are still a lot of unknowns Valve has detailed four general features including, "In home streaming" that will allow you to play your Windows and Mac games on your Steam OS living room machine, "Family sharing" that allows you to take turns playing one another’s games while earning your own Steam achievements and saving your individual game progress to the Steam cloud, "Music, TV and Movies" that will bring big media company partnerships to the SteamOS. as well as "Family Options", an account like feature.

The SteamOS is just first of three big announcements expected from Valve and best guess is that at least one of them will be about Valve's Steam Box, a new kind of "home console hardware".





Source: Steampowered.com