Valve promise it will deliver "simple, easy-to-read" TV navigation with minimal effort from devs, except to make sure it "works well with a controller" and Valve 'do the rest'.
"On Monday, the company will begin a public test of a new television-friendly interface, Big Picture, for buying Steam games and playing them on computers in the living room," read the report.
Valve's Steam enjoys 40 million active users which means there'll definitely be a market for PC gamers who enjoy hooking up their rigs to a big TV. Valve want to capitalize on that and so came up with Big Picture, which almost turns a PC into something of a console experience of sorts.
"Steam’s big-picture mode doesn’t require any additional development from you,” describes the company. "Just ensure your game works well with a controller, and we’ll take care of the rest. And don’t worry, keyboard and mouse aren’t going anywhere — users will be able to switch between input devices at any time.”
It's unclear what's involved exactly in this 'public test' that the New York Times reports.