Steam Machines are basically just another type of PC, so it’s not surprising that Valve was showing off a line of Steam Machines developed by gaming PC manufacturers like iBuyPower, Falcon Northwest, Alienware, and Gigabyte. Rather than build your own PC, deal with the Windows desktop on your TV, and use existing controllers that aren’t even supported by many PC games, Valve is creating their own type of PC, operating system, and controller to bring the PC gaming experience to the living room. For the moment, Valve says Steam Machines are targeted at existing Steam users who want to play their PC games in the living room. Valve is taking it a bit slow, and they’re not positioning Steam Machines as a competitor to the Xbox One or PlayStation 4.

If you don’t want a Steam machine, you may not be a part of Valve’s target audience. A big success would mean that Linux would become a more competitive PC gaming operating system outside of the living room, too. If few games are released for Linux, SteamOS will have a rocky road ahead. This means that Valve will have to convince developers to release their games for Linux and not just Windows. SteamOS is actually a custom Linux distribution built on top of Debian Linux, just as ChromeOS, Android, and many other widely used operating systems are built on top of Linux.Īny game that currently works on Linux will work on SteamOS. It’s an operating system intended for the living room. RELATED: 8 Things the Alpha Release Tells Us About SteamOS's Linux System To this end, Valve is also creating their own operating system - known as SteamOS - and game controller. Everything would just work on a TV out of the box, so there’s no Windows desktop, Windows updates, or other complexity involved. You’d buy a Steam Machine, plug it into your TV with an HDMI cable, and use the controller to log in with your Steam account, play games, and use media services.

Steam Machines will be tailor-made for this living room scenario.

Steam stream to another pc