Gamers, rejoice. With Valve teasing the imminent announcement of their PC/console hybrid aptly called the Steam Box, a mysterious website with a timer appeared. And with the timer ending, it led to the announcement of the Steam Operating System (OS). The OS itself is a combination of Steam’s current platform and Linux.

Steam OS is defined by Valve as a 'free operating system' that is specifically designed for living rooms. Users familiar with the Big Picture Product launched by Valve last year that allows any Steam user to play their games on a television with an improved UI and at the same time provides controller compatibility will feel right at home as this is definitely a more powerful and sophisticated (spiritual) successor to it.

Valve has announced four new features that will launch with Steam OS but at the same time will be available on the Standard Steam platform. They are Family Sharing, Streaming, Parental restrictions and multiple options for different media such as music and movies etc. Family Sharing allows users to share their games with friends and family digitally, through the use of cloud computing. Streaming will allow users to stream games from any computer to the television. How this works is not completely clear right now but will be in the coming days.

The announcement of the Steam OS is surprisingly the first of three announcements scheduled for this week and all three announcements are targeted towards bringing Steam in the living room. The next announcement is on Wednesday around 10PM Pakistani time.

As mentioned above, Steam OS will be a free download for users but at the same time it will also be a free licensable operating system for manufacturers. Valve already has leading developers developing games for Steam, and they have highlighted that when the OS is launched next year it will come with hundreds of games and many AAA titles as well.

The big question that beckons is as Steam OS will be a new OS that will challenge windows and Mac as well, will enough developers support it exclusively?

Moreover, Valve have already announced that they want to challenge the new consoles i.e. The Xbox One and the PS4. With less than a month to go, the timing of this feels just about right, but at the same time these two consoles have a head start on Valve. Also, with the new consoles will come a new generation of motion controlled games as well which Valve might also have to challenge.

Valve has been hard at work to bring the PC experience in the living rooms. With the launch of Big Picture Product they got a feel of how well a product like this can perform and this time round Valve is ready for all out war. With games like Half life, Team Fortress, DOTA 2, Left 4 Dead under their development, Steam could be a contender for AAA exclusives as well. All will be revealed in the coming days. Stay tuned.