While the theory sounds good, the Steambox never evolved to a list of supported configs. Valve stated that Nvidia, AMD, and Intel would all be supported and Valve displayed great hesitancy in providing any specifics. Rich's earlier post on the state of Graphics Drivers remains mostly valid.

In addition, the release of a few Linux games such as Civ5 & Borderlands, have provided sales figures to those companies on whether the investment was worthwhile.

Many companies considered Linux primarily because SteamBox was an interesting market. While some companies were taking a wait-and-see audience, the slow play of SteamBox only makes more people take a wait-and-see attitude.

The OpenGL mess of "4.4 is good enough", while both AMD & Intel failed to deliver good drivers, is further muddled by OpenGL Next. Basically, accepting the OpenGL API needs a re-write and will become more Mantle/Metal/DX12 like. So will Intel & AMD deliver good-enough 4.4 drivers, or do we all wait for OpenGL-Next. Don't forget that AMD just did a 7% layoff, limited resources.