Valve announces SteamOS and Steam Machines, Sony details the PS4 upgrade offer, Microsoft
cautions against using your Xbox One in a Vertical orientation, and more!
Hey guys, Jess here with the Curse Weekly Roundup - brought to you this week by CM Storm!
First up - Valve teased earlier this week that the Steam Universe is expanding in 2014.
They promised us three announcements over the week, the first of which turned out to
be SteamOS, a free operating system designed for the TV and living room.
It will be "available soon," and will include four new features focused on the living room
that will also be coming to the regular Steam client: In-home Streaming; Music, TV, and
Movies; Family Sharing; and Family Options, and you can click the link in the description
to go to the announcement page and read more about those features.
The second announcement Valve made was Steam Machines; now, Valve had been teasing these
for a while, with rumors of a "Steam Box," as it used to be called.
Now they've confirmed that Steam Machines, a powerful new category of living room hardware,
will be hitting the market in 2014, and running the newly-announced SteamOS.
This year, though 300 lucky Steam users will receive early units for testing - click the
link below to read the announcement and find out how to opt in to the beta.
The THIRD and final announcement Valve's making will be dropping - sometime today!
So keep your browser set to Store.Steampowered.com/Livingroom so you don't miss it.
Next, Sony has detailed the steps you'll need to take in order to upgrade certain PS3 games
to teh PS4 versions at a discounted price.
This program was announced at Gamescom, and applies to the following four games: Call
of Duty: Ghosts, Battlefield 4, Watch Dogs, and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.
If you purchase a physical copy of any of these games for the PS3, a code is included
that you can redeem on the PlayStation Store.
Once you get your PS4, all you do is sign into your PSN account, look up that game in
the store, and it'll be available to you for $9.99.
Note that you WILL, however, have to insert the PS3 disc into the PS4 to play it, presumably
to prevent you from simply selling the PS3 version.
If you purchased a digital version of any of hte three games, no code or disc is need,
you can simply sign into your PSN account and purchase the PS4 vesrion at the discounted
rate.
At this point I just wanted to take a quick second to thank our sponsor this week - once
again, this week's Roundup has been brought to you by CM Storm, we wanted to show off
their new Pulse-R aluminum gaming headset.
It's fitted with custom 42mm drivers for thumping sound and astonishing clarity, a detachable
noise cancelling microphone for pristine voice chat, and cushioned ear cups and headband
that remain comfortable even during marathon gaming sessions.
Now back to the news - Microsoft has cautioned against using your Xbox One in the vertical
position.
They say that the console will not support this orientation, and that using it vertically
could damage the console.
The official statement is that "it's a slot loading drive," so it was designed to be used
horizontally only.
Which is odd considering that both the PS3 and PS4 have slot-loadign drives, and both
can be used freely in either orientation without risking damange to teh console.
Additionally, Microsoft claims that they found that 80% of Xbox 360 users have their console
in the horizontal position - is that true?
Personally I use mine vertically, but why don't you guys leave me a comment letting
me know what position your Xbox 360 is in?
Oh, and while you're at it - yes, I know.
Horizontal position, etc.
Thumbs up for the way I breezed past those dirty joke opportunities?
Finally, we got our hands on a whole bunch of beta keys for Infinite Crisis, the upcoming
MOBA from Turbine based on the DC Comics storyline of the same title....and we wanna give them
away to you!
We'll drop a link to the giveaway in the video description, it's super easy to do so definitely
head on over and snag a key for yourself, and then remember you can check out the Infinite
Crisis wiki for more info on the game and its champions at InfiniteCrisis.Gamepedia.com!
That's all we have for you this week, but as always be sure to subscribe, and give this
video a Like for gaming news!
And remember you can tweet me @JessBrohard if you wanna talk about video games sometime!
Thanks for watching!
Enjoy the game.