The first of three planned announcements coming out of Valve that have a "livingroom" theme went live on the hour as SteamOS was announced.
"As we've been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we've come to the conclusion that the environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself. SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen. It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines."
The announcement reads a bit like we're getting the fruits of the labour Valve have put into BigPicture mode as we'll now be able to stream games from our desktops via "living room machines", as well as playing native SteamOS titles on said machines. It would seem there will be family sharing and cloud features to go along with it and the SteamOS will improve performance.
Is this a forerunner announcement for the long rumoured Steam Box? Who knows, but there are two further announcements expected from Valve this week. Surely one of them will replace the awkward phrase "living room machine" with something a little more sexy.