Steam now 65 million users strong as Valve makes a push for the living room
Valve's Steam service for PC distribution and sales has over 65 million users playing its over 3,000 games, the company announced this afternoon. That's a 30 percent increase (15 million accounts) over the last 12 months -- not too shabby! -- putting the service's userbase well above that of Microsoft's Xbox Live (which has 48 million, according to MS). Not quite the 110 million that belong to Sony's PlayStation Network, but not too shabby.
The new Steam number comes ahead of Valve's planned hardware beta, which intends to test the three main components of the company's big living room push: SteamOS, Steam Controller, and Steam Machines. The first of those components, SteamOS, is a Linux-based navigation solution for gaming PCs in the living room. While in can be installed on any PC (and it's free), it'll come installed on the physical Steam Machines that Valve ships to 300 beta participants (alongside the aforementioned Steam Controller). That said, at 65 million users, you have 0.0005 percent chance of being chosen for the beta. Best of luck with that!
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STEAM PASSES 65 MILLION
Leading Entertainment Platform Expands Reach and Services
October 30, 2013 – Valve today announced 30% growth in active accounts during the trailing 12 months on Steam, a leading platform for PC, Mac, and Linux software.
Now offering over 3,000 games and software titles to over 65 million accounts, 2013 also marked Steam's 10 year anniversary of providing services to gamers. Expanding upon that history, Steam gamers saw the introduction of several new service features during the year, including Family Sharing, Steam Trading Cards, Early Access, and support for Linux titles.
Looking ahead to 2014, Valve looks to expand Steam's services and offerings to gamers and developers by holding the Steam Developer Days in Seattle, WA this January and rolling out the recently announced Steam Machines with a variety of hardware partners later in the year.
"The main goal of Steam has always been to increase the quality of the user's experience by reducing the distance between content creators and their audience," said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. "As the platform grows, our job is to adapt to the changing needs of both the development and user communities. In the coming year, we plan to make perhaps our most significant collaborations with both communities through the Steam Dev Days and the Steam Machines beta."
For more information, please visit www.steampowered.com
