Of course it is recommended that users connect their PC's with HDMI cable, to get the best picture and avoid any compatibility issues with the new service. Also if you hate wires you can simply connect to your TV with The Air SyncHD device or some similar to it. The Big Picture team chief Greg Coomer said “We’re confident in some things that customers want. They want a full-screen experience. They want to be in the living room. They want to use a game controller. They wanna have a social gaming experience. And we have this platform that lets us ship a significant portion of that experience.” Instead of a boring and (in my opinion) very hard to navigate on-screen keyboard, Valve brings one in the shape of a Lotus with different key combinations in it.
Valve has implemented a web browser from which you can switch “on-the-fly” back to your game. They also added in; auto correct, context awareness and what is being considered a cooperative split-screen mode. It would work so that multiple Steam users could login and play on the same screen. After their statement “What we really want is to ship and then learn. So we want to find out what people value about that. How they make use of it. When they make use of it. Whether it’s even a good idea for the broadest set of customers or not. And then decide what to do next.” we can possibly expect Valve to seriously consider creating their own type of console. Of course, if they get positive response with this project and since it's free, Valve already has a head start over Xbox Live. There are many free-to-play games like Tribes: Ascend or Blacklight Retribution on PCs, but not that many for game consoles. If Valve takes this seriously, and it looks like they will, Microsoft and Sony could run into a new big name on the console scene.
[Ed – Valve has some very interesting ideas on how games should be played and on what hardware. Although console games are much cheaper to develop (since you have a single platform) PC games are more flexible and powerful when developers put time and effort into them. Perhaps with Valve’s Big Picture we may see development companies and publishers start to put time into the PC platform again. Of course, Microsoft could screw all of that up with Windows 8 and its link to the Xbox and Xbox Live, but we have a feeling that many gamers are going to be resistant to the new OS so Valve still has some time.]
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