Can the XB1 take back the US crown?

[ReimTime]

Arkaign said:

ReimTime said:

They used to have PC gaming by the balls back when Age of Empires was out, but then they let it slide when they shifted to the Xbox brand. Their reduced focus on PC gaming led to shitty GFWL, and SWOOSH, in comes Steam. It will be interesting to see how Windows 10 and Hololens play into PC Gaming in the future, because I'd argue that Valve is the one who was PC gaming by the balls today.

I would agree. If MS and Valve can see how much they need each other and build a cooperative landscape moving forward (along with bringing big-budget MS titles to PC), they could both see big revenue and profit increases, while lowering risk.

Valve needs MS, because there would be too much of a gap trying to move off of Windows onto a true Linux-based gaming OS.

MS needs Valve, because there is no substitute for the leading company in PC gaming frontends to be worked around. As you note, GFWL was a disaster. Even if it were totally free from the get-go, it would have been a disaster. MS doesn't need to try to go around Steam, it would only hurt them. They simply need to supply the OS, and have tons of product to sell through Steam (maybe work an insider deal to lower the Valve % cut in exchange for making a low-cost custom 'Xbox' Windows OS lite for Steamboxes).

That said, titanic companies like MS, Sony, Google, Apple DO tend to fall into the greed trap too often, which results in 100% of nothing instead of a big cut of a huge pie shared equitably.

+1

Some very good ideas! That would be an interesting cooperation: MS and Valve. Steam and MS really are too embedded and in charge of their respective disciplines to be upended. It could be said that many of the crew that build PCs use Linux, but I do know that a lot of them still use Windows (albeit the older versions). The odds of the Steam + MS merger happening however are a little more unclear than I'd like to believe. Like you said big companies like to be greedy, and every company is trying to integrate themselves across as many devices as possible (Valve is building consoles, MS is trying to get into PC again, Nintendo is looking at mobile gaming). Call me crazy, but I think MS would try to buy out Valve before they agreed to a cooperation.