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Comment by hoilogoi | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft needs to pull out of mobile and tighten their grip on the desktop market. I can say anecdotally that the only reason many people stay with Windows is for games.

I'd like to see Windows rebranded as "The Gaming OS which does much more than just games". They need to keep the value of Windows tied to the value of Steam. This means bending over backwards to the needs of game developers and cementing the expectation that you need Windows if you want games before that expectation goes away.

This may even mean marketing themselves to Mac and Linux users as the OS you should dual boot if you want to play games. What a crazy thought.

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Pull out of mobile? Meanwhile the entire world is pushing mobile market making a lot bigger than the desktop pc market? Not a really good idea. It would be a suicide and they know it, that's why they are putting billions of money in windows phone and nokia, they NEED at least a minimum marketshare (10%) in the mobile market

There are also lot of people making a lot of money in the energy industry. Is it time for Microsoft to start drilling for oil, too?

"Mobile" has little overlap with the markets that MS has built 30 years of competitive advantage in. Phones and tablets are not general substitutes for PCS.

Microsoft's venture into the "mobile" market has resulted in them slapping the Windows name on products that are almost - but not quite - entirely unlike Windows, and this has brought a good deal of frustration to many people.

> They need to keep the value of Windows tied to the value of Steam.

The same Steam who has done more than anyone else to make MacOS and Linux viable gaming platforms?

The trouble with games is that there's really no lockin, and porting is not that difficult, so if the publishers see MacOS and/or Linux becoming larger platforms, they'll put out more stuff for them (this is already happening, especially with indies and Valve), and few will stay on Windows because they really need game X from 1995 to keep working.

Microsoft's real strength is the enterprise, where people do need terrible internal app from 1995 that no-one has modified since then to keep working. You can't do that on Linux or MacOS easily; both are pretty happy to break binary compatibility when it suits.

(drivebyacct2, it looks like it's time for drivebyacct3 to make its debut. You appear to be hellbanned.)

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