Steam is looking to bring new life into PC gaming with Big Picture Mode with the recently announced Steam Machines and Steam controllers. The company has chosen to embark on this task to stay relevant in the PC gaming space after Microsoft launched Windows 8 back in 2011. Steam's next plan is to give PC gamers the ability to stream any video game content on another device within the home. The company calls this new initiative, Steam In-Home Streaming.
The new service is now allowing beta registrations via a group on the Steam's Community website. Furthermore, Steam In-Home Streaming will be open to beta testers later in the year, with beta participants selected at random, according to Valve.
The Steam In-Home service is expected to be a key part of the company's SteamOS when Valve launches the Linux-based operating system and hardware based on that operating system late next year.
"High-powered SteamOS living room machines are nice, and fun to play with, and will make many Steam customers happy", according to a previous statement on the Steam Community website, "but there are a lot of other Steam customers who already have perfectly great gaming hardware at home in the form of a powerful PC.
"The prototype we're talking about here is not meant to replace that. Many of those users would like to have a way to bridge the gap into the living room without giving up their existing hardware and without spending lots of money.
"We think that's a great goal, and we're working on ways to use our in-home streaming technology to accomplish it - we'll talk more about that in the future."
If Valve is able to pull off this Steam In-Home Streaming feature in the future, the company could very well bridge the gap between PC and the living room. This is something Microsoft failed to do in the past, which could be the sole reason why the software giant created a separate entity to conquer the living room. That entity is called Xbox, and it has worked out well for the Cupertino giant thus far.
