World class gaming is here and it’s all thanks to Valve with their new and upcoming innovations, gaming will surely be more satisfying and more thrilling!
During GDC 2015, Valve officially announced their new products for the year. Aside from their trending Steam VR, a new tech called Steam Link was announced and is said to give gamers a top-notch gaming experience and graphics to televisions. But that’s not all; Valve has also announced its Source 2 engine, the successor to the Source Engine used to power first-person shooters like Half Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source. Source 2 was designed with “user-generated content” in mind.
“We continue to see very strong growth in PC Gaming, with Steam growing 50% in the last 12 months. With these announcements we hope that we are helping build on that momentum.”
Gabe Newell, Valve’s President
Steam VR
Two new technologies were introduced during its announcement. The Lighthouse and the VR input system. The Lighthouse will be responsible for the VR’s room scale tracking system that you can incorporate into mobile devices, headsets, TVs, monitors and input devices. The Steam VR will be available to hardware manufacturers for free this coming April, and unfortunately for us consumers, we have to wait until November. Hopefully it will be available by then.
Steam Link
Its main idea is to incorporate your PC gaming into your TV through HDMI. It also has an ethernet port for more efficient streaming and three USB ports to connect to your PC. It is designed to enhance your Steam experience, enabling you to play anywhere in an area with a home network. If you’re thinking of lag issues, you can think again with a 1080p/60Hz low latency support. Steam Link is expected to come out this coming November 2015 at $49.99.
Source 2
This is designed to increase creator productivity by enabling users to participate and involve themselves in their gaming development. Given how important user generated content is becoming; the idea is quite brilliant and will surely benefit both the users and developers.
Over the years, Steam VR and Source 2 were only known by a few hints here and there and simply by its name. Now that it’s official, I guess all we can do for now is to wait for its release.
With these new techs and new games coming out, I feel like 2015 will be an awesome year for gamers and developers.
