Steam Big Picture Mode goes to your TV, enters beta in September

It's been more than a year since Valve announced Big Picture Mode, a feature that "will offer controller support and navigation designed for television interaction" in Steam. In last night's episode of GT.TV, the company announced that the feature will be made available this September as a beta.

"In early September you'll be able to hop into a beta, click a button, and see Steam reformatted for your TV," Valve's Greg Coomer said.

Big Picture Mode will include everything Steam has to offer. "Everything will be there. So you don't have to give up all your favorite stuff once you move from the den to the living room," Coomer said. However, he did point out that "there are some games are better made with controller input than others, so those will be the best experiences in the living room." Big Picture Mode will support controllers and standard keyboard and mouse setups.

Valve head-honcho Gabe Newell also spoke to the program about Big Picture Mode, agreeing with host Geoff Keighley's assessment that the company is more interested in offering this solution than making their own hardware. Newell explained that "we should it to hardware guys and say, 'look, if this is a useful tool for you to deliver your hardware into living rooms, that's great.'" He also pointed out that hardware partners could use Windows or Linux.