This week's games news

Valve, the enigmatic developers of the epoch-making Half-Life series and multiplayer stalwarts Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2, has made a series of living room-friendly announcements. Firstly, it plans to release a free operating system based on its online games shop Steam, which will run on Steam Machines: consoles that run Steam OS and are designed to sit under your TV rather than via a PC or Mac. While Valve itself won't be making them, a number of hardware manufacturers have said their Steam consoles will be available next year. Their other piece of news was the Steam controller, which has two round track pads rather than thumb-sticks, as well as a central, clickable touch pad reminiscent of PlayStation 4's. Although it looks a bit peculiar, Valve's unblemished history of awesomeness suggests that it's likely to work pretty well.