Valve announced its SteamOS operating system last year and now the company has begun giving a selection of users access to Steam Music, the media player that it first teased last year .
Polygon reports that the service initially only supports MP3, but a notice inside the Steam Music beta group explains that “support for more file types [is] on the way.”
Users who are among the first selected can access Steam Music as part of the SteamOS and Big Picture mode. There’s no desktop interface for now, but Valve says it is one of many features that will come soon.
Valve is also planning to introduce TV and other content for Steam OS. They are certainly requirements if it wants to keep up with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, both of which cater to multimedia as much as games, and aim to go beyond the PC and cater to ‘the living room’ user.
➤ Steam Music beta starts today [Polygon] | Via PC Games N
Image via Peter Løvstrøm / Flickr
Confirmed: Microsoft will launch the Xbox One on November 22
Microsoft announced today that it will launch the Xbox One on November 22 in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, UK, and USA. Microsoft previously delayed the launch of its next-gen gaming system in eight countries : Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and Switzerland. The console will now launch in these markets sometime in 2014.
The release date was confirmed by Lawrence ‘Major Nelson’ Hyrb, Director of Programming for Microsoft, on his official blog , as well as by Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President of Marketing, Strategy and Business for Xbox over on Xbox Wire .
The console will launch shortly after the PlayStation 4 in the US (November 15), but a week or so before Sony’s next-gen console debuts in Europe (November 29). It ensures that both video game consoles will be available to order on Black Friday in the US, as well as in the run up to Christmas in all of its initial launch markets.
The Xbox One will be sold for $499 with a single controller, Kinect, and a Chat headset. There will be 23 games at launch, of which most are cross-platform and cross-generation titles. Forza Motorsport 5, Dead Rising 3 and Ryse: Son of Rome exclusive to the Xbox One, however.
It was revealed earlier today that the CPU of the Xbox One had been bumped up from 1.6 GHZ to 1.75 GHZ , following a similar upgrade to the GPU clock speed. New NFL and ESPN apps will be available for this year’s America football season, and for a limited time pre-order for the Day One edition will ship with a free copy of FIFA 14 in Europe.
Voice commands will only be supported on the Xbox One in five countries at launch, although users can choose to import the region-free console to snag this functionality early.
Players will also notice that the Xbox Live Marketplace has been rebranded as the Xbox Games Store , and following a similar update on the Xbox 360, they’ll be able to buy digital content in their local currency; Microsoft Points have been scrapped .
Still can’t decide whether to buy the Xbox One or PlayStation 4? Read our in-depth guides:
➤ An occasional gamer’s guide to buying a next-gen console: Xbox One ➤ An occasional gamer’s guide to buying a next-gen console: PlayStation 4
Featured image credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
Update: Amazon.com has stopped taking international orders for Chromecast
Google’s compact Chromecast streaming dongle still isn’t available outside of the US – at least from the Google Play store – but Amazon is now offering international shipping options to help plug the gap.
Spotted by Engadget (via Android Central ), you can head over to the product page on Amazonom right now and snap up a unit. Reports suggest that orders can be placed in the UK, Hong Kong and Germany; the full extent of the shipping isn’t known, so regardless of your location it’s worth trying your luck.
You’ll need to pay the appropriate shipping and import fees, but until Google decides to offer the Chromecast globally, this is the safest (and probably cheapest) way to buy one of these little beauties.
Image Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images