Valve Officially Launches TV-Friendly Steam Big Picture Mode

An anonymous reader writes "Valve on Monday announced the public release of Big Picture, Steam's new mode that lets gamers access their games on a TV, in over 20 languages. Big Picture lets you use a traditional gamepad (as well as a keyboard and mouse) to access the complete Steam store and Steam Community from the comfort of the couch in your living room."

Re:What prevented doing this?

[decipher_saint]

Nothing at all, except now you can do it with a gamepad-friendly interface.

Re:What prevented doing this?

[Colonel Korn]

"If you're a Steam user, you can set up Big Picture by simply by connecting your PC or Mac to your TV via a single HDMI cable."

So what kept you from doing that last month, or last year?

Big Picture didn't exist last year, and last month you could do it but it was still in beta.

Re:About .. eh.... time?

[Pathogen David]

It is basically a 10 foot UI for Steam that is Xbox controller friendly. It's been in beta for a while, you can activate it by clicking the shiny button at the top of your Steam window [minus.com]. (If you have a custom Steam theme, you may have to disable it to see the button. If you don't have access to Steam right now and just want to know what it looks like here are screenshots of the start menu [minus.com] and the games library [minus.com]

Re:About .. eh.... time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Text entry via game pad sounds hideous

It is.

Co-Signed the XBox and PS3

Valve has a winner

[Suiggy]

I've been using this mode in the Linux beta of Steam. It's pretty nice, it's up there with the XBox 360 and PS3 media interfaces.

Re:PC required?

[Suiggy]

Beefy PC? There are guides coming out on how to build a $300 DIY Steambox, minus the cost of OS and the cost of an optional XBox 360 controller which you can use on Windows or Linux. It'll be competitive against Microsoft and Sony's next consoles.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3706718/forget-the-ps4-and-the-xbox-720-build-your-own-steambox-on-the-cheap [theverge.com]

Re:About .. eh.... time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you really a complete moron or do you just play one on the internet? He's describing a text entry method. You know, with characters like A, B, C and so forth.