Steam Big Picture Mode..
It seems Steam has released their new "Big Picture Mode". Basically it's a full screen game launcher kind of like a media center app to launch your games from your sofa with a controller kind of like a console. It sort of reminds me of those 10-Foot User Interface media center apps that are front row remote driven including the one I use.. Plex.
Unfortunately not very many of my games that I have in Steam are the kind I play with a controller.. most of my controller driven games are outside of Steam... In order to make full use of big picture mode I'd have to add those as non-steam games to my Steam library. It works to add them but it unfortunatly shows a generic header image for them when browsing.
Also the few that are in my Steam library need updating to be fully compatible so I can totally operate them from my Sofa... Some of them pop up preferences windows when you start them causing one to have to get up and dismiss it with a mouse and then sit back down again. But that seems to be in the minority when it comes to gamepad driven games thankfully... especially when I'm launching a game either from a company that makes that entirely optional (such as Feral) or one of my own wrapped games. I decided to make a catagory of games in my steam list that work well in big picture mode on my system including a bunch of non-steam games since like I said.. a majority of my the games I prefer to play with a gamepad I did not purchase in Steam or aren't available for Mac unless I wrap them myself in Cider or Wineskin.
I can now bring up the steam overlay with the home button in the middle of the gamepad and also take screenshots from it by holding down the home button and pressing the right trigger… previously there was no way for me to take screenshots from a game I would play with a gamepad. When Steam is open one can use the home button on the Xbox 360 controller to bring up big picture mode at any time reminiscent of pressing the menu button on the front row remote to bring up Front Row or Plex\XBMC\what have you.
At last the home button on gamepads have a use on the Mac (and PC). A drawback however is on the Mac if you have the steam window closed and steam just running in the dock when you enter and then exit big picture mode it brings up the steam window again. There needs to be a fix for that so the steam window doesn't pop up when you exit big picture mode... in windows they keep the steam icon in the system tray but there's no way to put steam in the menubar icons on the right side of the menubar as far as I know.
It seems most games steam or not can be made to work with the overlay and thusly big picture mode... and if they don't pop up preferences windows or allow one to disable those at startup then that works. I tested out a couple of my own personal cider ports and I was able to upload screenshots from them to the cloud. There's a fairly interesting typing function for gamepads in big picture mode...
One wrinkle in Big Picture Mode is when it comes to controllers it requires an Xinput compatible gamepad to navigate the UI. That means Xbox 360 compatible controllers. So it may not be compatible with standard dinput PC controllers or PS3 controllers via bluetooth. I could test the former some time but not the latter since I don't have the latter. I tested it out with a wireless Xbox 360 controller initially.. seemed to work flawlessly apart from any incompatiblity that might arise with the game itself.
It's not nearly as efficient as typing with a keyboard though of course. As can be predicted it's easier for me to get up and sit on the edge of my couch.. lean forward and quickly type something into the box there and click upload rather than type something up with that typing UI for the gamepad. If it fails to upload it's very discouraging having gone through all the trouble to type up something with the gamepad just to have to do it all over again when it fails and one has to do it again.
The UI runs at 1280x720 by default if you have a 512MB or less video card and complains that it might not run well if you set it to 1920x1080 and have 512MB or less VRAM on your GPU. So, unfortunatly that means it can't run at the native resolution on 27 inch iMacs for example.
Someone who plays literally all their games with a gamepad would really like this mode though especially once they've got compatibility with all the games in the library all sorted. For me personally since I only play some of my games with a gamepad a 10 foot UI is mostly useful for media files such as movies and TV shows than for games to be honest. I mostly use that sort of thing to browse videos (as with Plex).. although having that gives people an option… one could take their wireless keyboard and mouse and sit further away and browse and play games as well as use a gamepad if desired or necessary. Much like Games For Windows certified games it automatically shows the appropriate prompts on screen depending on which device you are using.
I have to admit though my own personal "PC bias" keeps me from fully enjoying big picture mode as I'm somewhat set in my ways. But I can see a use in it especially if\when I want to play games sitting away from the computer such as when I play one of those games I don't mind or actually prefer using a gamepad to play. f I had one of those huge home theaters (and I mean HUGE... like custom interior with front projector and seats on risers) I'd probably use big picture mode quite a bit actually.. now that's one place where it makes a hell of a lot of sense. I can only imagine what it'd be like sitting in the middle of one of those huge home theaters like rich people have with a wireless keyboard and mouse and or gamepad and play steam games like that
{Steam Big Picture Mode Announcement Page}