Valve Sees “Big Picture”, Brings Steam to Your TV
Valve just keeps adding features and value to its Steam gaming (and now, software) platform, and the latest is a doozy. The company announced the launch of Big Picture, which allows users to game on the living room TV with their Steam accounts.
The actual connection is quite simple--you can hook up a PC or Mac to your TV with an HDMI cable--but Valve built Big Picture with lots of juicy features. The premier feature is that Big Picture is designed first and foremost with game controllers in mind. Although you can use a keyboard and mouse with Big Picture, everything about it is optimized for gamepad input, from the UI to typing to Web browsing. Indeed, the Web browser uses reticle-based navigation, and the gamepad-friendly typing tool is called Daisywheel.
Of course, everything you’re used to having on Steam is there for you in Big Picture, including your games library, cloud files, Steam Workshop content, and preferences.
As is usually the case when Valve launches something, there’s a sale on games to accompany the Big Picture launch: Thirty titles that are ideal for gamepad control are on sale until December 10th, with some discounted up to 75% off.
The actual connection is quite simple--you can hook up a PC or Mac to your TV with an HDMI cable--but Valve built Big Picture with lots of juicy features. The premier feature is that Big Picture is designed first and foremost with game controllers in mind. Although you can use a keyboard and mouse with Big Picture, everything about it is optimized for gamepad input, from the UI to typing to Web browsing. Indeed, the Web browser uses reticle-based navigation, and the gamepad-friendly typing tool is called Daisywheel.
Of course, everything you’re used to having on Steam is there for you in Big Picture, including your games library, cloud files, Steam Workshop content, and preferences.
As is usually the case when Valve launches something, there’s a sale on games to accompany the Big Picture launch: Thirty titles that are ideal for gamepad control are on sale until December 10th, with some discounted up to 75% off.
