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[DoubleClutch]

Microsoft should be terrified of SteamOS

SteamOS is spreading beyond Valve's hardware. That could threaten Microsoft's hold on PC gaming...or even Windows' hold on the PC market.

www.pcworld.com

“The X factor in the Steam Deck’s explosive popularity is the Proton compatibility layer, which allows games made only for Windows to run on the low-powered AMD hardware with minimal fuss. It can’t run everything — non-Steam games like Fortnite and the latest AAA polygon-pushers can’t run optimally on the Steam Deck. But it’s good enough for the vast majority of PC games and on a device that starts at $400, you get a lot of grace from gamers who also need to pay for rent and groceries.”

I think this is an important point. For a budget-conscious individual, a Steam Deck is a wonderful device. You can do reasonable gaming and computing on it at an affordable price point. At the same time, it’s getting better every day, whereas Windows isn’t.

I wonder how many PC gamers, if they didn’t need Windows to play all games, would even have Windows installed for home use. Many would move to Linux I’d wager.

“Microsoft’s has larger general woes in the gaming market, watching the Xbox platform and brand apparently drown even as its Game Pass subscription grows. Game Pass is pretty clearly the company’s attempt at a cross-platform rebirth, the culmination of hundreds of billions invested in buying up developers and publishers to own games as diverse as Minecraft, Call of Duty, and WoW.

But you can’t spend-money-to-make-money forever, and gaming isn’t Microsoft’s only business. It’s also desperate to sell Windows machines (2025 is “The year of the Windows 11 PC refresh,” allegedly), Office subscriptions, and AI services to the enterprise. There might be too many cooks in the kitchen and too many mouths to feed, all at once, in one of the tech industry’s oldest and most reliable megacorps.”

This is another important point the author makes. Microsoft has burned a lot of money on gaming and it hasn’t worked out. I doubt they pull out entirely, but a shifting of vision may definitely be on the horizon.

Windows and Xbox for gaming may very slowly becoming what Windows Phones were to Smartphones and were completely devoured by iOS and Android. We may be at the dawn of a new age.

 

[adamsapple]

The Steam Deck dominates PC gaming​

Does it, PC gamers of GAF?

 

[Mattyp]

if they didn’t need Windows to play all games, would even have Windows installed for home use. Many would move to Linux I’d wager.

lol.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Does it, PC gamers of GAF?

Maybe for poor people.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Just give me an OS with basic functionality that’s easy use and don’t force ads on me to upgrade to some useless version.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Many would move to Linux?

Microsoft should fear SteamOS?

 

[TintoConCasera]

Does it, PC gamers of GAF?

Not at all imo.

It's a good entry point into the PC world and a nice device to play indies and older games, but for everything else a good PC is where it's at.

 

[Tarin02543]

Does it, PC gamers of GAF?

No, deck doesn’t have Excel nor Word.

 

[adamsapple]

Many would move to Linux?

Microsoft should fear SteamOS?

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

I don't believe it'll go anywhere, but Windows is so bad these days that I would be happy if there was a viable alternative.

 

[RoboFu]

I wish it was true but alas no. The better thing is all the OTHER devices and OS that are creeping up just from technology advancements that will really take market share away from Windows.

 

[Astray]

But you can’t spend-money-to-make-money forever, and gaming isn’t Microsoft’s only business. It’s also desperate to sell Windows machines (2025 is “The year of the Windows 11 PC refresh,” allegedly), Office subscriptions, and AI services to the enterprise. There might be too many cooks in the kitchen and too many mouths to feed, all at once, in one of the tech industry’s oldest and most reliable megacorps.”

This is another important point the author makes. Microsoft has burned a lot of money on gaming and it hasn’t worked out. I doubt they pull out entirely, but a shifting of vision may definitely be on the horizon.

Windows and Xbox for gaming may very slowly becoming what Windows Phones were to Smartphones and were completely devoured by iOS and Android. We may be at the dawn of a new age.

Microsoft's biggest issue is that now two of its biggest divisions have to agree on what the future of Windows is, the time they will take to squabble between themselves and do meeting after meeting to find a compromise is only going to boost SteamOS's awareness in the market because Valve is far smaller and far more agile as a result.

Like keep in mind that the Windows Division already does shit like having updates creating new issues in old games.

However, MS's ace in the hole is to weaponize anti-cheat and simply not develop any Linux solutions for its big games like Minecraft, WOW or COD. This way they can delay the user adoption of SteamOS.

It's gonna be an interesting cold gaming war

 

[onQ123]

Does it, PC gamers of GAF?

Not even close maybe they meant to say Steam

 

[Warnen]

Until they fix the issue with anti cheat software for online games windows will dominate

 

[DoubleClutch]

You guys can laugh, but Linux is almost up to 5% market share. That doesn’t seem like a lot but it seems to be increasing 50% year over year the past couple of years.

Linux market share approaching 4.5% for first time, could hit 5% by 1Q25

Linux is an increasingly popular alternative to Windows and macOS.

www.tomshardware.com

Then you have MacOS and iOS to go along with it and Windows isn’t some untouchable titan it used to be.

What’s hilariously ironic is that the same people who laugh at this premise refuse to update to Windows 11. There’s serious cognitive dissonance occurring here.

Linux will be critical to ensuring a free and open society in the future.

 

[adamsapple]

You guys can laugh, but Linux is almost up to 5% market share. That doesn’t seem like a lot but it seems to be increasing 50% year over year the past couple of years.

Isn't that because it's factoring in Steam Deck into that? And not just desktop PC usage?

 

[DoubleClutch]

Isn't that because it's factoring in Steam Deck into that? And not just desktop PC usage?

It’s a contributor but not the only one. Open AI standards is another.

Remember, SteamOS is only just coming out.

 

[Skifi28]

Does it, PC gamers of GAF?

It has sold what, 4-5 millions at most? It's great for what it is, but dominating it is not.

 

[TBiddy]

2025 or 2026 will be the year of Linux on the desktop. No doubt about it. Forget 2024 or 2023 or the other times we said it. Now we really mean it!

 

[Crayon]

Ehhh.... no. Linux is there right now, including distros based on the steamos iso. While an official distro from valve would carry more weight, popular distros are just as good for playing your games. There is no sign of any exodus yet. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

More people are trying linux and less are bouncing off, but it's a little thing on the margins.

It doesn't matter how good linux gets or how bad windows gets. It's a matter of adoption by out of the box devices. Note how few times you've heard people getting discouraged with how "hard" or "not there yet" steamos is when it ships with their steam deck.

There have been a few huge steps and steam deck's success is one of them. If steamos can gain significant market share in the microcosm of handhelds, that will be another huge step. And that's great, but I don't see a clear path to getting oems to ship their laptops and desktops with linux. Valve can possibly become the de facto os for handhelds, and almost certainly for standalone pcvr with the deckard.

Is that enough to make ms scared? idk. Windows has lost to linux in many, many, use cases but desktops and laptops are so entrenched that I can't see any significant movement there before the far-flung future.

...

At the same time, it’s getting better every day, whereas Windows isn’t.

^^^ One of the most pleasant things about using linux by the way.

 

[Punished Miku]

I'm looking forward to using the new Xbox OS shit and Steam. I don't know why I would limit myself to just one thing. SteamOS is motivating MS to improve shit, so that's all good in my view. That's how it should be.

 

[od-chan]

Valve truly worked magic with Proton.

2025 or 2026 will be the year of Linux on the desktop. No doubt about it. Forget 2024 or 2023 or the other times we said it. Now we really mean it!

PREACH

 

[SJRB]

I swear to god some of these people have no idea how the normal world operates.

 

[DoubleClutch]

It has sold what, 4-5 millions at most? It's great for what it is, but dominating it is not.

First everyone thought it was going to be another Steam Machines flop, now there are copycats from big name OEMs like MSI, Lenovo, Asus…

 

[bender]

Reality: No they should not.

 

[Generic]

Until they fix the issue with anti cheat software for online games windows will dominate

What issue?

 

[Mortisfacio]

I'll always be windows for desktop gaming until the gap is non-existent in FPS across OS. Looking at 4090 benchmarks for games on Win 11 vs Ubuntu I see roughly 10% gaps. Then add to that some of the pseudo support for some games that aren't fully linux compatible, but have ways to work and need to tinker with. No thanks. I'd love to get off Windows if those two issues are fixed.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Not at all imo.

It's a good entry point into the PC world and a nice device to play indies and older games, but for everything else a good PC is where it's at.

Care to explain your logic here?

Games - 80-90% covered by SteamOS
Browsing - multiple browsers available, it’s a Linux
Work - Google Workspace or Office cloud-based apps

What do you need Windows for?

 

[Warnen]

What issue?

They don’t work, can’t play a good chunk of online games on steam os

 

[Davevil]

 

[Cyberpunkd]

What issue?

Developers don’t want to integrate Linux anti-cheat measures because they are too fucking lazy, even if widespread cheating is already present on Windows.

 

[Deanington]

I am surprised MS never made a dual boot system of their regular os and a lightweight version for gaming. Just give an option at the sign in screen to log into either one.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Care to explain your logic here?

Games - 80-90% covered by SteamOS
Browsing - multiple browsers available, it’s a Linux
Work - Google Workspace or Office cloud-based apps

What do you need Windows for?

He was asking about the Steam Deck, not SteamOS.

I need a powerful PC to play the graphic heavy games because I'm not playing AAA games on a device which battery will run out in an hour.

The Steam Deck is fine for old games an indies, those play great there and the battery lasts much longer with those games.

In the future I wouldn't mind migrating to SteamOS on my main PC, as long as stuff like Blender and Godot work fine there.

 

[El Muerto]

Does the author of that article not realize Proton has been available way before the steam deck? You can install any distro and use Proton. If Steam OS can come to any device such as a custom gaming pc, and have all the performance optimizations and sliders like what the Steam Deck has, then it would be somewhat of a problem for Microsoft.

 

[llien]

The ironic here that Valve's owner was probably really terrified by Microsoft Store.
That's how the whole Steam OS/etc was born.

Not bad after all.

Still, 30% cut of lion's share of PC market share going into a company with 79 employees is shameless shit.

 

[jm89]

The next "console" war

 

[Vlodril]

People have been trying to make Linux happen for 30 years now. Let it go.

It would be great to have a windows competitor but Linux ain't it.

 

[BennyBlanco]

Most gamers are savvy enough to get a copy of windows for cheap. The bulk of their enormous revenue comes from boring corporate shit. Also the most popular PC games require windows for their kernel level DRM shit. Even if gamers abandoned windows in droves it would be like a tiny rounding error for MS.

 

[Hookshot]

Considering only 33 people are playing Sony's latest masterpiece on Steam, I don't think MS need to worry about it.

 

[Skifi28]

Care to explain your logic here?

Games - 80-90% covered by SteamOS
Browsing - multiple browsers available, it’s a Linux
Work - Google Workspace or Office cloud-based apps

What do you need Windows for?

That 10-20% not covered isn't an issue to you? How about if you run into any problems in the games that do work? There's gonna be quite a bit of troubleshooting involved with lots of searching around obscure forums and you won't even be able to always find a working solution. Some people are not into that, they just want to play their games. Until Linux works seamlessly for pretty much all games, I imagine most people will remain on windows. I'll never understand that romanticised view to try and get people to use it.

 

[squidilix]

Nah, not really.

Companies will always running on Windows

 

[Zathalus]

Several things need to happen for this to really take off:

- Performance for DX12 and especially RT/PT needs to drastically improve on Linux.
- Nvidia needs to be onboard with releasing new features and software day 1 on Linux.
- Plenty of anti-cheat doesn’t work on Linux, probably needs addressing at some point.
- As good as game compatibility is now, for a full replacement it needs to be even better.

 

[xVodevil]

Maybe MS should pull a WOW Classic move and just bring back an XP mode in current OS when everything worked fine. Half kidding of course, but still.. a return to good old times of stability and least amount of issues would be much welcome, instead Win updates breaking games and so these days.

 

[Fess]

Gabe is about to take over everywhere. Imagine when there are $500-800 console-like SteamOS devices.

But Linux is SteamOS’s biggest weakness for desktop PC gaming. People who know Linux think it’s perfect but once you need to do something more than just sit in Steam and press a play button it’s like trying to type on the keyboard wearing hockey gloves for anyone not used to it. And people already complain that PC gaming in Windows is complicated.
Besides, there needs to be a transition to Linux among developers for SteamOS to get big. Native Linux versions, can’t have any compatibility issues.

 

[llien]

People have been trying to make Linux happen for 30 years now. Let it go.

Have you tried Steam Deck?

But Linux is SteamOS’s biggest weakness for desktop PC gaming. People who know Linux think it’s perfect but once you need to do something more than just sit in Steam and press a play button it’s like trying to type on the keyboard wearing hockey gloves for anyone not used to it.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I'm sure Microsoft is a little worried but Terrified will take a few years more. If they were actually scared there would be at least one blurry screenshot leaked on the webs actually showing a mobile handheld Microsoft OS.
But there ain't no such thing that I've been able to find.

 

[llien]

First everyone thought it was going to be another Steam Machines flop, now there are copycats from big name OEMs like MSI, Lenovo, Asus…

They are not copycats. Valve makes money selling games, you know. (made by others, you know, and having fat apple 30% for it)
They are interested in creating new handheld market and are absolutely open to anyone using SteamOS for it.

 

[Punished Miku]

That 10-20% not covered isn't an issue to you?

Series S is missing 1 game, and 1 local co-op mode and it was the apocalypse. Imagine missing 20%.

 

[kruis]

Many would move to Linux?

Microsoft should fear SteamOS?

On dedicated handheld gaming devices? Absolutely.

 

[Brakum]

As much as i would love this to be true. I dont think so. I just dont see linux ever having the support needed for a lot of people to jump ship, and i would love to jump ship. As soon as i can get linux and just download and install everything i could on windows, i'll switch to linux but it's just never ever ever going to happen, but oh boy would i love to be wrong.