Saturday, September 28, 2013

It's Time To Look at the Big Picture

I've put together a Steam Machine early this year, using windows for the games availability, and I wanted to use it with the AMD APUs to test out some really affordable hardware options  and I have been incredibly surprised by the quality of performance I've gotten.

There are some really big improvements I wish Steam could do that would push Big picture mode a long way. I wish I could be logged into both my living room PC and my bedroom PC without having to worry about whether or not I've logged off already and will need to re-type my credentials if I accidentally log in some where new while my old machine is still running. I can see needing to be told that a game is being played and not being able to play a game while the other profile is, but that looks like it's being addressed by game sharing.

One thing the Steam Big Picture can't do right now is have multiple user profiles logged in simultaneously. There are already some great games that support local multiplayer, Dungeon Defenders, and Monaco to name a few. This is something that consoles have been able to do this entire generation and I'm a little spoiled for it.

The ability to browse and play media from inside the client. Movies, music, etc.

The things I can tell you're trying to fix, and just need to improve on, fixing game launcher issues. Skyrim still requires a mouse to start the game and in game requires a keyboard to type things. Rocksmith requires a keyboard in game to type things but the big picture mode shell prevents the keyboard from working inside of it at all. Etc. Bugs in general.

Aside from that, Big Picture mode is making amazing strides, and I would be exstatic to play on it as my primary gaming machine in my household and to give my input during its development.

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