SteamOS Revealed

Valve announced their own Linux-powered OS, designed for the tv and the living room which unlocked at exactly 1:00 p.m. E.T. on Monday.

"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,"  said Valve.

SteamOS will be available "soon" as a free standalone operating system for "living room machines."

The SteamOS will feature "significant performance increases" for graphing processing, and Valve is now focusing on audio performance and reducing input latency. Valve said "Game developers are already taking advantage of these gains as they target SteamOS for their new releases," even though no specific developer names were revealed.

Four new features that will be supported through SteamOS and the standard Steam platform have also been announced in-home streaming, family sharing, "family options" like parental controls, and the ability to access movies, music, and TV shows from "many of the media services you know and love."

Valve has two more announcements set for this week, with the next reveal on Wednesday, September 25.