Yesterday, Steam announced The Big Picture - their new software specially formatted for TV screens. Now, I don't know a ton about Steam and would hardly consider myself a PC Gamer of any sort but I can't help but think of how potentially impactful this sort of thing could be. You've already got XBox and PS3 competing to be your one-stop-shop TV hub, not to mention AppleTV (or Mac Mini), but Steam somehow seems different. It's like an iTunes marketplace (games, movies), your established games, your Steam social network, the entire Internet and a blank slate platform to host whatever you want (it is, after all, just a PC of your choosing running this stuff). The preview says it all quite well.

Maybe this won't be that huge of a deal but, for me, it's something to keep an eye on. Steam may not have the marketing dollars that Microsoft has but they're doing things right and that makes them the fiercest kind of competitor.