What We Learned From Valve's Big SteamOS Reveal

Steam and Valve Corporation have announced the release of its new SteamOS operation system. SteamOS will feature the “rock-solid” architecture of Linux with a gaming experience specifically for TVs and will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.

Valve isn’t offering it up it’s mythic and secretive project dubbed the Steam Box just yet, but for Steam user who already have dedicated computer running steam on their Televisions, SteamOS offers a more stable environment to run them and allows streaming content from any other computer or operation system that is running Steam.

SteamOS is also free for developers and manufaters so any company now have instant and free access to Steam on their micro-console or home computers.

This is part one of three Steam reveals, the next one will be in two days. Stay tuned to Complex to how Valve is planning to take over our living rooms.

Here are five ways the SteamOS is going to change your gaming experience.

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SteamOS is Linux based open operating system that anyone can change and help make better. Valve hopes to use the collective knowledge of its users to make a stable and inclusive platform for their Steam delivery service.

Steam has long held that Linux will be the future of gaming since its non-proprietary so any company can develop software and hardware that works for the operating system that is free of charge.

Because SteamOS will be open, any hardware developer, for instance, micro-consoles or small gaming computers, can now be intergraded into our living rooms much faster because developers can alter or replace any part of the software or hardware they want.

A new feature of the SteamOS is in-home streaming.

In-home streaming will allow users to stream Windows and Mac games from their other computers onto a SteamOS machine. Users just run Steam on their existing computer and then your SteamOS machine can freely stream those games or media over your home network and onto your TV.

Family Sharing will allow users to share your entire library with those in your house or abroad. While one user can only play shared games at a time, individual game progress and preferences will be held in the Steam Cloud.

Family Options will allow users to edit game lists and allow for different accounts to have different games and content, keeping the kids away from the M titles in users libraries.

Hundreds of games are already running natively on SteamOS with announcements promised in the coming weeks promising AAA titles in 2014. Access the full Steam catalog of nearly 3000 games and desktop software titles all via in-home streaming.

SteamOS also offers free integration into the Steam Cloud featuring automatic saves and updates to everything. Using the cloud service users can switch from one computer to another, regardless of operating system or location and know that your presences and progress will all be saved.

SteamOS will be downloadable soon and free forever. SteamOS will soon be available as a free download for users and as a freely licensable operating system for manufactures. A timeline is coming in the next few days for its worldwide availability.

So while we’re still no closer to the Steam Box Valve is offering an open hand to any company, large or small, to develop hardware and software to take advantage of it’s huge streaming service.

While the Steam still doesn’t have an off-the-shelf living room device that users can simply plug in and play like a console, they are opening up the arena for any micro-console manufactures out there to do just that. Tech savvy gamers who already have media or entertainment computers attached to their televisions had take advantage of SteamOS to integrate all their media.