Comment by WhiteDawn

Really their best card is new and additional APIs, building incentives to develop against it.

WinRT (not to be confused with Windows RT, the early ARM version of windows), UWP, GDK, xgameruntime. All of these are relatively new and require virtualization and other security features.

Put pressure on devs by gateing xbox and gamepass behind this runtime and now you have a lever to make the situation more difficult for linux.

Kinda has the opposite effect on me however, as the only reason I'm not subscribed to gamepass right now is the games wont work on my steamdeck. But if MS can get enough killer apps as exclusive to that platform then that will certainly add some pressure.