The company that wants to bring computer games into your living room now wants to bring even more media to you.
New types of applications have been found in the code of the latest Steam Beta update, including FIlm, TV Series, Video, Music and Plugin types. The code that supports these new kinds of media for the Steam software was found by SteamDB, a third-party site that reports on developments on Steam.
While Steam has offered video game soundtracks before, the addition of this type of content to Steam would indicate more diverse offerings will be appearing down the road. It is also one step toward launching a full version of Steam Music, which allows users to play their own music while playing games within the Steam program. The Steam marketplace also has a few documentary films, but not a former movie storefront.
Steam is a computer game management and digital marketplace application from Valve, the company behind criticaly acclaimed Half-Life and Portal game franchises. With this beta update, the company is taking one more step in its plan to become a comfortable part of the living room. The company has previously announced its own SteamOS that would run on specialized Steam Machines, that would compete with game consoles as the gaming, and apparently, multimedia centers of the livingroom. Along with the previously announced Steam controller, the Steam boxes would allower for more affordable computer gaming that could expand the market for such PC games
These Steam boxes are currently being designed and built by various third-party hardware manufacturers and should be released in 2015. Valve is also testing Steam In-Home Streaming, a feature that would allow the Linux-based SteamOS that will be on the Steam Machines to stream games from Windows-based computers on the same network, once more opening up the living room for more computer games.
Steam first launched in 2003, purely for digital distribution and online support for Valve's games, but then expanded to a complete marketplace with third-party publishers in 2005.
Currently, the Steam software has over 75 million users, according to the company's latest announcement in January 2014.
Photo: Kosuke Kaneko
