Valve's new Big Picture mode for Steam sure looks nice in pictures, but how does look, and more importantly work, in action?
The official trailer was too busy moving the camera around to let you get a good look, so I figured I'd show you.
I recorded this on my PC, but to best simulate the effects of a couch I rolled my chair back to the other side of the room and used my 360 controller.
As you can see, everything is fast and intuitive (don't mind the first 15 seconds of "choppy" footage, that's my capture software, not Steam). As Jason has already pointed out, the controller keyboard works really well, the "snapping" between sections is a breeze and it takes almost no time to go from booting up the program to getting into a game.
I like it so much, in fact, I'm thinking about sticking with it on my desktop. It's not like I use many of the service's more advanced features, I just want to pick a game and go, maybe chat with someone, and this is a much nicer, dare I say maybe even faster way of doing things.
If you want to try it out yourself, go into Steam, click settings then under "account", where it says "beta participation", opt into the "Steam Beta".