Great news, not that I intend to buy such a console in the upcoming years, but more Linux games to play.

Faaairly sure it's just a "stream your PC game to a Steam Box" thing or something. Just because otherwise it implies a big massive work with Wine or some layer in between.

We'll see.

Faaairly sure it's just a "stream your PC game to a Steam Box" thing or something. Just because otherwise it implies a big massive work with Wine or some layer in between.

We'll see.

All/Most native linux games will run natively on SteamOS, Windows/Mac games can be streamed(AFAIK Wine will not be pre-installed and it might be tricky to install software through sources other than steam on it(If valve makes it easy to install third party software they might end up getting competing digital distribution services on the platform and that would defeat its purpose). Valve will announce some native SteamOS AAA titles for 2014 shortly. (We can assume that Valve will release their own games for it atleast but unless the other big AAA developers jump on board the OS will most likely flop badly). Getting gamers to adopt the OS shouldn't be that difficult though. Ubuntu allready gives a decent performance boost for sourceengine games so a stripped down system like SteamOS should do even better and if gamers are hesitant due to a low number of games they can always give the SteamOS users free access to some of their own games for a limited time to give people a reason to try it out.

If there is some party I'd have to choose to bring gaming to Linux (or SteamOS specifically, doesn't matter) it would be Valve with Steam.

Valve is no toddler in business world and I trust they know the leap they are taking with SteamOS, they have to be prepared to put lots of bucks into development, support, advertising etc. They were pioneers in cloud-based gaming, digital distribution and electronic sales with Steam, they saw the opportunity and made it happen.

Based on that I have much confidence in them really turning the PC gaming around, perhaps even affecting Windows popularity in the long run. After all, gaming and some specific professional tools are what is nailing down consumer preferences that OEM preferences depend on. After OEM manufacturers start to ship machines without preinstalled OSs or with multiple alternatives so that consumers have to make a conscious choice about it that's when we're starting to see the monopoly break.

That might be getting ahead of things but it's hard not to be enthusiastic about how this could affect the way games will be played.

Holy moly! Thanks for the link. That's a huge thing for me, as a linux fan, I'm really looking forward to this. I really wanted

I hope linux will surpass windows in gaming one day.

One think I find interesting is that -if- done properly, slowly, but surely consoles as we know them will become irrelevant. Some of this can be seen already today in the handheld space with the popularity of the Phablets. SteamOS could slowly replace the dedicated console hardware as there is no longer a reason to have dedicated console hardware, since all you have to do is just support the OS. This of course then re-creates the vendro lock-in issue that they are trying to solve, but I could see SteamOS having some if not significant impact on consoles -if- the adoption rate is high enough.

No. ;)

Heh, well played ;) Though, it would be interesting to know how involved Canonical has been with its development and whether this is part of their convergence plan or if SteamOS will be another downstream effort like Mint, Elementry, or Kubuntu (of course that assumes that it is Ubuntu-Core based)

One think I find interesting is that -if- done properly, slowly, but surely consoles as we know them will become irrelevant. Some of this can be seen already today in the handheld space with the popularity of the Phablets. SteamOS could slowly replace the dedicated console hardware as there is no longer a reason to have dedicated console hardware, since all you have to do is just support the OS. This of course then re-creates the vendro lock-in issue that they are trying to solve, but I could see SteamOS having some if not significant impact on consoles -if- the adoption rate is high enough.

Vendor lock-in is only bad when someone else is doing it :)

Valve is basically wanting to become Amazon.com but for games.

They want to have every website game page use Steam for purchasing, to 'democratize' the video game market. Except, democratize, with 30% going to Valve for every sale of any game anywhere on the internet (and 30% of all DLC and monthly subscriptions). In exchange, consumers will get a unified library, commenting and probably ratings, indie developers will be able to just upload their own games to their own game-specific Steam-enabled webpage and get to control pricing and promotional deals, and triple-A developers will get auto-patching of content. And Valve will force all the developers to go through them or be ostracized.

This is something the Humble Indie Bundle is also wanting to do, and has already be silently unrolling to the masses bit by bit.

Looks like Valve's next announcement is for their Steam Machines

[Update]

Upon further reading, Valve hinted that the next update may revolve around "input", so the third update may likely revolve around how they plan to interface with their new OS

Valve is late to the party the next gen devices will be out then and that will greatly dampen enthusiasm for the "Steam Machine". The issue with the PC is not that it wasn't powerful, the issue was piracy was rampant so the best developers didn't bother making content for it. If the best developers skip over the Steam Machine, it wouldn't matter if it was 2x more powerful than the PS4. It's a chicken and egg deal, u won't get those developers unless you prove your platform is not only viable but successful, but who is gonna buy a 300-1000$ device without atleast some AAA titles and promises of more? Maybe the hardcore PC gamer but that probably isn't enough..