Thankfully the best game makers on PC are pretty independent. id has always been about creativity and the the freedom to pursue it by encouraging people to mod and fiddle with code--and Carmack is a programming genius capable sidestepping whatever he has to to maintain that freedom; valve has steam, which is rabidly independent and getting more people on board.
This whole games for windows thing so far has been met with hostility from the PC crowd. They're trying to throw down a bunch of rules and restrictions and charge people to do what they've been doing for free all this time, Halo 2 and Halo bombed on the PC and the competitive crowd won't touch them because they're not even close to being competition ready.
The beauty of the PC is that the alternative doesn't have to come from a multi-billion dollar corporation (like coming up with a new console) but instead can come from a small group of determined programmers.
If push comes to absolute shove someone will come up with a more user friendly version of linux or adopt mac and just abandon Windows all together. With the backlash Windows and GFW is getting it wouldn't surprise me one bit.
They've already figured out how to get DX10 to work on XP with no restrictions (no "dumbed down" version of DX10).
The beauty of the PC is that is has always played by a completely different set of rules.
3rd Party Wall of Shame
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=30478.msg581036#msg581036
