Alternate history: Microsoft never joins the console race

[HoloDust]

Chazore said:

HoloDust said:

I was more thinking in the line of MS focusing on PC, where there home is, instead of consoles and making something akin to STEAM before Valve did it.

It could have also allowed for MS to fully realise their GFWL ideal on the PC platform, because without Valve around, there would have been nowhere else to go (GoG may not have even existed without Steam as well, and even if it did, MS would have likely bought them out by then or squashed them). 

Yeah, I remember the wreck that was GFWL - but I wasn't thinking of that. That came after STEAM already started to pick up...well, steam.

My thinking was - what if MS launched HALO on their own STEAM like service back in 2001, instead of doing the whole XBOX thing.