SteamOS is Valve’s first big announcement this week

The first of Valve’s three announcements has been unveiled as SteamOS, a “a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines” based on the Linux architecture. It’s said to be an operating system built around Steam itself, with living room TV play in mind, and is due to be made available “soon.”

It’ll tie-in with the recently revealed account sharing options being explored by Valve, and will also allow a few interesting streaming options. The company says it’s working with “many of the media services you know and love” (music, TV and the like) in an effort for all of that to be available through both Steam and SteamOS. Naturally, games are part of the equation too; streaming games from your existing PC to a living room machine running SteamOS will be an option.

For the technically-minded, Valve notes that SteamOS has “significant performance increases in graphics processing” with audio performance and input latency being targeted next. Here’s the overall “vision” for this project:

With SteamOS, “openness” means that the hardware industry can iterate in the living room at a much faster pace than they’ve been able to. Content creators can connect directly to their customers. Users can alter or replace any part of the software or hardware they want. Gamers are empowered to join in the creation of the games they love.

You can read even more about it on this very page. Then ponder the implications. What exactly denotes something as a “living room machine,” for example?