Steam ‘Big Picture Mode’ Announced By Valve – Allows Console-Style Gaming Through Your HDTV!

Written by Rob Nichols on February 28, 2011 · Filed under Games 

Well, GDC has begun, and Valve has already dropped what could potentially be a bombshell. Valve, the masterminds behind the incredibly successful and popular gaming franchises Half Life, Portal and Left 4 Dead, has announced that PC and Mac gamers on Steam will soon be able to play games through their television sets, using a controller.

According to the guys at maclife.com, Valve is keeping fairly tight-lipped on the details, but the basic principle behind the new feature, named ‘Big Picture Mode’, is clear for all to see. However, this could cause many problems in the gaming world online, especially, as anyone who has ever played games on both PC and console will know that using a mouse/keyboard combination can provide much greater performance than using a console controller.

This may result in what ultimately comes down to a completely unfair game, however it’s great news for single player gaming, and I suppose it’s a matter of choice whether you use a controller or not anyway.

“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,” said Valve spokesman Doug Lombardi in the press release.

If you do keep the keyboard/mouse combo, though, this news will offer nothing new, as the notion of connecting your PC to a HDTV is not an especially modern one, but I guess the news revolves more around the option of using a controller to navigate the PC games. Again, nothing new, but there must be more than this than initially meets the eye. I mean, I could go and connect a PC controller to my machine and hook it up to my TV, there just might be a few issues with compatibility.

So, we’ll keep you posted if anything more comes of this any time soon, and I’m particularly looking forward to seeing if this involves any sort of wirelessness. it would be pretty cool, and the above quote from Doug Lombardi does somewhat hint at that eventuality. We’ll see.

Do you welcome this news from Valve? Would you like more PC gaming to have console controller options to play on your TV from the comfort of your sofa? Or do you already have your computer connected up to your TV playing games with an Xbox 360 wireless controller and this announcement doesn’t add a great deal to your current gaming system? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: MacLife