Valve announced the beta and gave a full list of the features included in the new Big Picture mode: Big Picture mode was added to Steam a little over ten years ago as part of Valve’s initial push towards living room televisions. As an interface, I’d deem it semi-successful, even if its intended use on Steam Machines or even Steam Link never became commonplace. The Steam Deck’s interface, despite primarily being designed for little screens, is much improved. I’m a particular fan of the universal search. If you want to test it out for yourself, with what Valve call “rough edges”, you’ll need to head to your Settings within Steam and under the Account tab hit the “Change” button in the beta participation section and select the client beta from the dropdown. You’ll then need to amend your Steam shortcut by adding “-gamepadui” to the end of its “Target” property.
