| Conina said: Do you really believe that PC's and Valve's/Steam's success only had little to do with the groundwork Microsoft has layed out? |
API : DirectX was only one of many used for gaming, audio API's introduced by directx only made things more streamlined, little more.
Online Infrastructure: pioneered by swoftware such as gamespy with anti-cheat systems like punkbuster.
Distribution: Again, a solution valve came up with, approached many companies including microsoft with the proposal of setting up a network of content servers, Microsoft turned them down.
PC games: Microsoft made very few games for PC, over the years, where as some 50+ per month were being released by other companies.
Compatibility: Removal of native dos in later windows systems, and prior to that, dropping 16bit microcode support essentially cut off access to the thousands of previously released games, even today a lot of games released for OS's up to Windows 7, no longer run properly on Windows 10 systems.
That "groundwork" you talk about is simply being the authors of the most commonly used OS, crediting them with the success of Steam because of that is like crediting the success of usain bolt to the guy who laid the track.
If DirectX was open source it would be a different story, but it isn't, so it's not.
