If you want people to show Microsoft that they don't want to pay for Live, it can happen two ways:
1) Everyone stops paying for Live and loses their Gold advantages, like online play. (NOT HAPPENING)
2) Every 360 owner buys another platform for online gaming, so they can stop playing their 360 online. (NOT HAPPENING)
I think this whole ordeal with "paying for Live is bad" is overrated. Yes, Steam is free and does many of the things Xbox Live does and more, but paying for Live on the Xbox is not bad by any means.
That's not to say that Microsoft are making the most of it, which I really think they should. I love that on Steam, you don't buy a version of the game like you do everywhere else, you buy something broader, because once you've bought it, it's yours to use on both Mac and PC. That's absolutely fantastic, and I wish Microsoft would leverage Live for that, especially now that they've expanded Live unto Windows Phone 7.
Also, you don't understand why Valve releases games on consoles? You of all people should know better MM, these guys are making a lot of money from the console versions and they're not holding the PC/Mac versions back in any way. The stupidest thing they could possibly do would be to stop developing console versions. And it's not like they're bringing all their games to consoles. DOTA 2 is decidedly a PC game with its focus on community and its gameplay, and so there won't be a console version. L4D, Portal and what have you, does not suffer from being brought to consoles by any stretch of the imagination.
And I don't really see how The Witcher 2 is supposed to be all that much of a great Steam game. The only thing you mentioned about it that isn't on Live is the cloud storage (I know you mentioned price, but amazon outdoes Steam, go figure), which is hardly all that. It's a nice thing to have, but I can't remember the last time where I wasn't gaming on my own PC.
And console games might be holding PC games back in a way, but with the great costs associated with pushing hardware boundaries these days, there isn't much point in trying to push games graphically. It's lovely to see games that look great and take advantage of their platform, but I don't think a lot of games actually gain much from being PC exclusive, other than being less restricted by the platform.
The newest high end PC hardware can set you back hundreds of dollars for a single component, it's crazy! How many developers in the world want to spend money on going after pleasing the people with this hardware? It's a small group after all, so setting the bar at console levels is fine by me. It just means I can get an affordable PC which can play great games in a great way.
I'm not saying Steam isn't the better service, I'm just saying that this whole thing is blown out of proportion.
