Comment by ThrowawayB7
3 months ago
> "All of this insulates them from having to worry about the long-term sustainability of making money from game sales on Windows..."
The weak link in your theory is that Microsoft is in control of the future of the DirectX API, not Valve, and it is Microsoft who is working with nVidia and AMD and game studios to evolve DirectX to take advantage of the latest GPU features. SteamOS can at best follow closely behind but can never take the lead without Valve developing their own games API that games developers an GPU makers are willing to target.
Did you forget about Vulkan? Valve and AMD are Khronos members and active contributors to the Vulkan spec. Games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Civ VII use Vulkan on Deck. There's a complete graphics ecosystem with full participation from the games industry that doesn't have Microsoft as the gatekeeper.
Vulkan has become the same extension mess as OpenGL, it is only taken seriously by Google, Samsung and Valve.
Vulkan?
Hardly has any major adoption by game studios outside Android.
it would be a really bold move on microsoft's part, as it would be direct monopoly abuse
it would be interesting to see how or if they were punished for it in the current political environment or even the next one, but i hope we don't find out
i suspect long term it would just be a foot gun that drives vulkan's popularity anyway though