By Zaid at Thursday, February 06, 2014 8:12:00 AM

Originally introduced on the original Xbox, the ability to play your MP3 collection while you gamed was a small, but welcome feature. It arrived at just the right time, since a quality MP3 collection was a bit of status symbol in the late 90s, early 2000s. Putting together your own soundtrack to accompany a game of Halo was a in some ways a fun game by itself.





The feature survived the transition into the following console generation, but unfortunately saw itself cut in this new generation. Neither the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 allow you to play your own music, instead forcing you to stream using their built services, Xbox Music and Sony Music Unlimited.





But the feature looks to be making a comeback on, of all places, the PC thanks to Valve's new Steam Music.





Press Play

Now that Valve is making an assault on the lounge with SteamOS and the Steam Machines, reviving this feature is a small, but smart move. Currently in beta stage, Steam Music will integrate with Steam Big Picture and SteamOS and allow gamers to play their locally stored music while gaming, without the need to Alt-tab to another application.





"With Steam Music, you can now listen to your music collection while playing games. Once you've pointed Steam to your local music directory, your Steam Library will include Album and Artist views of your collection," said Christen Coomer, Valve's user experience designer, on the company's official blog when revealing the feature





"From there you can view and play albums and tracks, manage your queue, and access the Steam Music player by pressing the Guide button on your controller. (No controller? Keyboard and mouse users can access the active player from Big Picture's main menu.) Once in-game, the music player follows you via the Steam overlay, where you can manage your current playlist, browse your collection and listen to whatever suits your mood."





The option makes a lot of sense if you're trying to created a centralised entertainment hub. If you're interested in giving it a crack, you can joining the Steam Music community group to apply for the beta.

"Under Pressure"

The interesting thing about this feature for me, though, isn't so much that it's coming, but rather what it possibly hints at as far as Valve's intentions with music are concerned. I mean it's not as though PC gamers couldn't play their music while gaming, albeit with the use of a concurrently running app, but this is hardly what one would call a revolutionary feature. Steam Music seems to me like the a small step toward a much more ambitious goal. Now, I may be reading too much into it, but a different FAQ-style blog post on the matter reads that Valves motivation for the feature was at the gamers' behest.





“For years, customers have been asking us to provide a basic way for them to access and play music while in-game," wrote Coomer. "Task-switching between resource-intensive 3D games and other desktop apps has never been a graceful experience for gamers, so an in-game player can help by eliminating that pain point.”





OK, sure, they're doing it to make the gamers happy, but then they drop this little bombshell. With Steam Music, Valve sees "an opportunity to broaden Steam as an entertainment platform which includes music alongside games and other forms of media ." Emphasis mine. In other words, Steam could be more than just a way for people to receive their gaming fix, the potential is there for Steam to be an all-in-one entertainment solution, encompassing music and, as they put it "other forms of media". Sounds suspiciously like video content to me.





The second to last paragraph in that post poses the question of whether music would be sold on Steam, to which Coomer answers with, "Steam currently offers a number of game soundtracks for sale. Your feedback will help guide where we take things next."





While I hesitate to call that second to last question a smoking gun, it is just the right amount of vague. Coomer may not have said an outright yes, but he didn't exactly say no either. If I'm right about this, then future of Steam looks very bright. It is already the de facto digital store front for video game content and shifting to music and movies would take much effort on a technical level to accomplish. With Big Picture and the Steam Machines, they're already making moves to take over the lounge, it only makes sense to offer people a complete entertainment solution.

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