Aside from that, what would you even suggest Microsoft do? Building their own portable game console would be suicidal, with Nintendo firmly entrenched with a large stable of games on one side and Valve's Steam and their monopoly on Windows games distribution on the other, which even Epic flushing billions of dollars down the drain hasn't been able to dent. Even Sony bowed out of the handheld console market and they were in a much better position to compete.
Nah, there are much graver (pun not intended) problems on Linux, but especially not having a standard environment to program against (which libc will be available?), and even more so the terrible terrible binary backwards compatibility/longevity.
I don't use a Steam deck, but its success makes Linux a viable alternative for me.
Now... If a lot of people play on Linux (either directly like me or indirectly through Steam Deck), why would devs not make games directly for Linux instead?
PC gaming Windows licensing is probably not significant to their revenue.
For now, most PC gamers still buy laptops/desktops with Windows, or build a desktop and obtain a Windows key.
Xbox Game Pass seems to be an important piece of their plan, because subscriptions are gold.
They release games that are PC and Xbox compatible (that might work on other systems, e.g. Linux). As long as Xbox Games is selling games, they are less concerned with how the games are played.
Giving up the PC Gaming on Windows part of their strategy does not necessarily have a big immediate effect on Microsoft. (But may be short-sighted in the long term.)
100% for me. I loathe having to boot my Windows PC, figure out why the Keyboard isn't working, getting a different one, installing a driver update, restarting to update Windows because it's been so long since I last played, ...
What I want is either a small device that's aimed at gaming, I guess that would be a game console or a device that's small and portable that streams to whatever TV I want to play at (we have 2). I guess that would be Nvidia GameStream, is that still a thing? Oh and Linux, would I love to have the PC run Linux.
They have tabloids in the start menu to supplement income, of course. There is a bit of truth in that joke, they have completely lost touch with their customers. You have PMs and designers making decisions about Windows... on their Macs.
Games were one of the few moats that Windows had. Now, you can get most productivity tools on a Mac, and most games on Linux. With no adverts on either. And the PC gaming customerbase aren't really tolerant of adverts. Possibly the only remaining advantage with Windows is that you can do both.
I completely agree, although perhaps their hair is on fire, which has inspired them to acquire Minecraft and pursue Activision.
>The success of Steam Deck makes Linux a major gaming platform, opening the way for PC gaming to migrate to Linux.
I think this has been brilliant by Steam, is great news for PC users, but it's something that has taken time. It has been so frustrating to see articles in the Verge declaring that SteamOS, or the Steam Box/Steam Machine were 'failing' because they did not result in overnight market dominance. But they were necessary steps to get to this point.
Now if the Windows org is banking on gamers staying on Windows, then I can see why they'd be sweating.