Gamer Blast

Recently, a new beta client of the popular PC gaming platform Steam was released. It includes many interface updates, including it running on a WebKit rendering engine instead of Internet Explorer, both in the Steam client itself and on the in-game browser.

The client looks very nice. It’s a refreshed look, and it also fills many needs in the community. (One being that now, when you’re on the page to purchase a game, it will tell you which of your friends already own that game. They’re trying to be more of a social experience, and it’s working.) This beta update boasts features that help you discover features, citing that the overhauled user interface is in place “to improve discoverability of features and to better expose all the information related to games in your library.”

All of you statistic fans will also be glad to know that it is now easier to view your achievements for a game. They’re listed both in your game library, and on the in-game overlay (which got a huge overhaul and is looking to be much more useful than before).

Now, let’s start talking about the future.
Rumours and speculation, as well as pure desire and even demand, has been going on for Steam on Mac OS X for quite a while. Make no mistake, while the Mac community is largely under-catered in the gaming department, we want a piece of that pie. And it looks like we might be catching our break soon.
A friend of mine found these files earlier today, in the graphics resources for the new Steam beta. While these are just a few images that relate to the Mac operating system and don’t really tell us a whole lot, it does make you wonder why they would be in there if Steam wasn’t ready to make a move to OS X.
My prediction?
I personally think that Steam will move to a game streaming kind of deal, like the upcoming OnLive. Instead of installing games locally and playing them through files on your computer, you simply launch the game on a remote server, which then streams the video in real-time of the gameplay, as you press the buttons to tell the server to tell the game what to do.
In essence, you could play games that require beastly gaming machines on a seven year old PC, since all it’s doing is streaming video. No more updating graphics cards… It’s like watching a movie that you interact with. To the computer, that’s what it’s like, anyway — To you, you’re still playing the game.
I think this would be a great move for Steam, because not only would it open them up to the Mac OS X and Linux marketshare, but also to low-end consumers who don’t have the budgets to upgrade their computers, but want to try out the newest games.

What do you think?

[You can download the new beta here]

Related posts:

1. Steam for Mac Private Beta Leaked
2. Steam May Be Headed To Linux
3. What Steam’s Hardware & Software Survey Tells Us
4. Mac Gaming Gaining Traction
5. Steam for Mac Released – First Impressions