Quote Originally Posted by Bolivar View Post
That said, I don't know if making or sponsoring a console is a good move for Valve. I'm really not feeling Big Picture. When you boot a game from it, it still runs in the same inappropriate resolution for your TV. Even when you try basic things, like going to your Steam profile page, it opens it up in a web browser. The default Steam web browser, mind you, not this "first person" browser they're hyping up. Controller support is limited, and I'm not sure sticking with XInput is a good way to differentiate yourself from Microsoft, especially when you have the same buttons listed on the prompts. You also can't run media content from elsewhere on your computer as you would expect a console or really any PC-TV interface to do.

In short, it's a controller-compatible interface... and strangely, nothing else. I can't imagine why they decided it was ready to drop the beta designation.
I'm not sure why you would judge the ability for a Valve console to succeed based on the level of support a new Steam interface on PC. And if that's not what you're doing, then I'm not sure why you'd bring up support/compatibility with Big Picture mode at all. An actual Valve console would likely be a different beast entirely.

But honestly, I hope they do get into the hardware game and use a Linux based box. Game support is one of the few things holding me back from switching to a Linux distro, and Valve is already making a big push that way. A Linux based console from them would undoubtedly push Linux support a lot farther if it took off, which being Valve, it stands a better chance of taking off than any other new entrant in the console game.