So lately, Iv'e been really concerned about the direction that PC gaming, and the PC as a platform is going.
It seems that regardless of how people feel about Windows 8, Microsoft is still moving right ahead with it. Now, you can make of this what you like, but it seems to me that Microsoft is becoming increasingly more and more hostile to the open desktop. And it seems to me that one day they are just going to up and completely abandon it.
This bothers me on multiple levels. I tells me they are no longer interested in creating a environment in which developers have control of. Instead, they want to push people towards their own proprietary platform in which they have complete control over and lock developers out. (Windows Marketplace)
This lead me to wonder about Steam in the future. If Microsoft completely shuts out the desktop, applications like Steam and all of it's users are completely dead in the water. Modding and the creation of custom game content will also be closed out for the common person as well. It concerns me that Microsoft would also be doing this in favor of rolling out their own Live service across PCs, forcing users to pay for all the same things that Xbox users have been paying for, but we are so use to having for free.
I guess what I'm getting at is, if what I see coming is right, will PC gamers put up with this stuff? Does Microsoft even have a realistic chance of doing something like this? It might seem silly, but I pretty much stopped investing in games on Steam a while back when I realized this, because I felt like those were games that I might end up being locked out of later on.
I watched a lot of the Minecon stream, and had seen that the developers there were still feeling pretty confident about the PC platform. And the same goes for Blizzard, whom is getting ready to officially release Hearth Stone and the next WoW expansion. That's great, but how come I don't see the same concern from the industry that I have had for so long? Perhaps I'm completely over thinking this and I may even be painting a false image in my head of what's up ahead. But Microsoft's actions really do bother me.
What do you all think of this matter? Perhaps other's insight will allow me to see things differently.
This is what SteamOS and Linux in general are for. Microsoft has been dying for years, but they're not making the only OS in town, and sure as shit not the best OS in town, either.
Valve is pushing for Linux, hard. The list of games that run on Linux is getting longer, and bigger names are joining. AMD has been quietly working on their open source video driver recently, they may be pushing that in favor of their own proprietary driver in the future. Nvidia has even recently become aware that Linux is a thing.
All the usual arguments people have against using Linux are beginning to fall away, and once they do, Microsoft won't even have a voice in the PC market.
If SteamOS comes to the game, I am kicking out Windows from my PC or at least multi booting it. 65 million people is not a easy number to over look my friend.
Well, I think it comes down to the fact that over time form factors become less relevant to casual users as smaller, cheaper and more practical ones come along. It happened from desktops to laptops about a decade ago and now it's happening from PCs in general to tablets. I'm not saying that power users are going to ditch their tower PCs for iPads, but casual users will - and like it or not, they make up the vast majority of users. What I guess I'm trying to say here is that in order to stay relevant in the mobile future, Microsoft will have to ditch the 'classic PC' set up (desktops/laptops), along with its open platform in favour of competing with iOS, which they have been trying to do with Windows 8, and will only continue to do. In fact I'm fairly certain that the next major iteration of Windows will be metro only, as the Microsoft only intended for the Windows 7 style desktop in Win8 to be for legacy support. It's hard to see them supporting the desktop with future iterations, leaving Linux as the only option for those wishing to use a traditional PC. As far as gaming goes, SteamOS seems to be Valve's contingency for when Microsoft finally kills of the open nature of Windows.
tl;dr Casual users stop using PCs, over time MS stops supporting said (open) platforms and replaces them with a tablet OS, power users will go to linux, Valve is creating SteamOS for when MS stops allowing an open windows environment.
I think another point to be made is that even aside from gaming, there are still many desktop applications out there that are still required by lots of people. In particularly, production applications. And I really don't see tablets taking over the production environment any time soon. So I would imagine Microsoft would keep the desktop around for at least one more iteration. And I think the fact that they actually responded to the backlash over desktop functionality in Windows 8 is also something to be noted.
I understand they want to try to remain relevant, but they can't just ditch the desktop in order to pursue mobile. Desktops are still relevant, and they will be for a very long time. Why completely ditch the only market you really have for one you barley have any say in? I would have been much happier with Windows 8 if they just produced two separate versions of it. One for the desktop and one for mobile. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if they continue to go down this path, they will have no authority in any consumer market.