Moving Steam Big Picture gaming into your living room without moving your PC

PC gaming is the coolest form of the medium. Valve and Steam want to move it from your cellar to your living room with the Big Picture . As it is though , elegant front end that it is , there are couple of things in fact one missing thing ,one vital tantalising omission that would allow Valve and PC gaming to dominate not just your living room but everywhere. 

I will reveal what I think this Gaulish magical potion that Steam needs later on . 

First let us address a concern about the Big Picture : What if you do not want to play on a big screen .. or use the screen for something else well you could play on your iPad using Splashtop 2 : 

lets try X COM Enemy Unknown 

or Planetside 2 

As you can see Splashtop 2 is sufficiently fast enough at streaming to allow you to game away  from your PC and thus away from your TV too on your iPad..ideal with a few caveats for your Big Picture front ended Steam gaming...

But there will be times you want to play on your big screen TV so here is how you can  play Big Picture and Steam games on your big screen without "bringing" your PC ..

For this you will need an iPad,Splashtop 2, Apple TV and of course your gaming PC loaded with Splashtop Streamer . And a game from your Steam collection say X Com Enemy Unknown. Mix all the ingredients together and  it should work.. Here's one such set up I prepared earlier: Apologies for the VGA camera but you should still be able to get the Big Picture ...

As you can see, it is simple to play PC games using streaming, there is minimal latency , thus technically there is no need to move your PC into your living room at all to play Big Picture Steam games. The missing component though is a tablet overlay control set up. 

Streaming Apps like Splashtop on PC,iOS and Android , DLNA TVs , Apple TV and fast wifi mean the backbone for being able to play our Steam games any where is already there ..the vital ingredient that is missing is control..

Whilst Valve have talked at great length re controlling games using a keyboard mashed with  a 360 pad interface mashed with a 360 joy pad ... What they have ignored to this point is most people are screaming for better touch controls as everyone owns some form of tablet or phone these days. I want to be able to play with any controlling device, mouse, joypad and tablet. 

Ask Windows 8 users what they want most from developers and they will say dedicated multi touch controls ... the OS is here , ..but the control scheme is still not .. you are still resorting to external controllers every time you play your classic PC games.. Similarly the disappointing thing about Xbox SmartGlass is the level of control they left out.

But controls are not enough ,what the Big Picture needs is it`s own dedicated android iOS and Windows 8 App, one that a single tap of would throw your game to your DLNA TV,Apple TV or streaming service of choice. And it needs to give you a control interface on your phone or tablet. Yes I could just use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse but as a gamer I need to nay expect to see cross device touch control advance alongside all the magical devices and software we are constantly showered with... 

I hope that the rumoured Steambox console is actually accompanied with a Steam Streaming App ... if you want the freedom to Steam game  anywhere on anything , we are almost there .. with Splashtop THD on Android all that is missing is a mirroring option to  a big screen, with Splashtop 2 on iOS we really need a control overlay a la THD . Of course all of this would be unnecessary if and when Steam release their own Big Picture streaming app... which will happen a lot sooner if we all get on to Gabe and ask for it ... so go on get twittering to Gabe and Valve !

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