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Valve to Talk About Steam’s New “Big Picture Mode” at GDC

News & Rumors Other

Valve today revealed its plans for a “big picture mode” of Steam.

What is this mode?

Well, click that lovely little “More” button and you’ll see.

Valve to Talk About Steam’s New “Big Picture Mode” at GDC

This new “big picture mode”, as funny as it may sound, is actually pretty interesting. It will offer controller support and navigation designed for television interaction.

Big Picture Mode will allow users to enjoy Steam on multiple screens throughout your average home.

“Our partners and customers have asked us to make Steam available in more places. With the introduction of Steam on the Mac, and soon in Portal 2 on the PS3T, we’ve done just that,” said Doug Lombardi. “With big picture mode, gaming opportunities for Steam partners and customers become possible via PCs and Macs on any TV or computer display in the house.”

Further details on Big Picture Mode will be revealed at GDC, so we’ll be keeping an eye out.

Valve will also be sharing data collected from TF2’s Mannconomy. Remember that the microtranscation system is available in the Steamworks SDK. .

“We’ve come to understand what type of content sells well in TF2’s in-game store, and the various price points at which players value this content,” said Robin Walker. “Our players are continually teaching us what works and what doesn’t. Much of this feedback can be generalized to other titles on Steam, so we’re looking forward to sharing what we’ve learned with partners at GDC. We’re also interested in seeing partners get up and running with their own in-game economies, so they can collect game-specific data to inform their design decisions.”  

Overall, very interesting, and we can’t wait to hear more.

Also, even if it isn’t mentioned in the press release, we strongly suspect this might be the second surprise.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/5063/

3 Comments

  1. i think its genius. really excited bout this.

  2. How about doing stuff that’s actually useful? Like a bandwidth monitor… No offence, but what is the point of having Steam on a TV? It’s not like I gonna navigate the menus with my remote controller! AS for myself, I do own a TV, but it’s a media center with a wireless keyboard and an integrated trackball.

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