STEAM OS - What do you think?

[FrontlineJaguar]

Steam OS well I have mixed thoughts about it Valve missed the opportunity if they would have released steam machines before the launch of Xbox One and Ps4, Windows 10 DirectX 12 they could have made an impact but now it seems less relevant.

First lets have a look at PC gaming.

Gaming on PC is different from consoles while we know a size able amount of people who use PC as their daily gaming machine but the true audience of Pc gaming is scattered among different services. If you go and look at top games played on steam most of the game are made by valve or at least valve is the dominating publisher in that arena. http://store.steampowered.com/stats/. If you start exploring beyond steam pc gamers also use other clients such as uplay (which is not a good gaming client) but if you want to play ubi games or only choice, moving on we have origin for ea games. Agree or not Battlefield has a very dedicated Pc fanbase and they are not going anywhere since they barely have any option except origin if they want to play battlefield. Battle.net is again a popular client used for blizzard which has some of the best selling pc games Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft and highly addictive Hearthstone.
It is very clear that hardcore pc gamers are fragmented among different clients and if you like to play games on multiple clients windows will remain best option unless the above stated clients make their make on steam os.
We all are aware about how triple-A games sell on PC majority of them barely crack 1-2m mark I am not talking about ips like AC, Watch Dogs, COD, FIFA and many more this further puts question on how many big games will make debut on steam os. Valve will have to sell bunch of steam machines to get them on board. Thousands of games are already available on steam and yes popular games among pc community like CS go, Dota 2 are available but are these 10m hardcore steam users willing to buy a dedicated machine for gaming which will cost them the same price as the consoles. On most part answer is no.
Yes Valve can succeed if they have planned some killer app. If next cs goes exclusive to steam os yes they will attract gamers but many will abandon as well and others will simply dual boot windows with linux os like ubuntu and play it on linux if possible.

The dent by Directx 12
The biggest damage to steam os is dx 12 the API is going to allow dev's to code to metal and developers are already showing excitement around it. Dx12 impact would have been way less if W10 was not a free upgrade since it is a free upgrade dx 12 is going to become a development standard for PC soon or most dev's will support if not a standard.

I believe steam os won't be a massive success as Valve hoped it to be until they go ahead and make dota 3, half life 3, team fortress 3 all only on steam machines.