Yep. They saw Sony as a threat so they decided if Sony cant work with them take them out. That forced them to spread themselves thin between PC and the console realm. A very tough place to be in. Thanks to Valve PC gaming will go further. 

It's a rather disingenuous statement, honestly. Microsoft knows exactly what happened to their involvement in PC Gaming. It boils down to this, they wanted to enter the console market, and needed to leverage all of their own studios, as well as any 3rd party exclusives, as well as timed exclusives onto their new machine, in order to make it a viable platform for people to buy into.

They inferred through the popular business of PC gaming servers, that they could create a closed network and sell access to the common consumer, and probably had an idea that DLC could open the kinds of revenue streams we're seeing this day and age. Mind you, it was only an idea, given prior to your XBL's and PSN's, most 'DLC' was user created, whether it's just cosmetic changes or actual maps, equipment, vehicles etc...

For them to say they 'lost' their way, assumes they didn't know what they were doing, and well, that's the disingenuous part. They knew what they were doing, basically butchering what they did on PC, to create interest/demand for console. Right or wrong, isn't really important in this case...simply strange to try and rewrite history, so to speak.

Looks like they are going where they should have all along, consoles was not a place for them.

People have a way to high opinion on steam, MS will be able to throw xbox on all their PC tablets and phones. That's a hell of a punch they can throw. Potential success is but opinion of people like us who know nothing really. But only a fool discounts MS when PC is the platform.

Halo Gears Forza and such is one hell of a foothold on any PC xbox PC service. Halo released on console and PC day one will be mega huge.

Lets face it, Minecraft 2 might not be on steam.  

I think they're being pressured to make more money for MS. This is a way to do that.

Just curious what should Steam be doing that they are not already doing to secure their turf?  

Also I think a lot of people are looking this over, PC gamers can use Steam's service for third party games and Microsoft's for first party games, PC gamers are in no way required to pick only one service.  The only way Steam is gonna lose any marketshare is if MS's service offers games cheaper than Steam.

If their hidden agenda is to bring royalties and mandatory pay for online multiplayer to PC games, they can go f*ck themselves with a cactus.

They dont have exclusives because valve doesnt make any games anymore and they lack the features like shareplay.

Its not the same platform one uses linux the other uses windows. Most games are not avaible on steamOS yet. Xbox and pc are seperated but most share now the same games as both are popular in gaming, steamOS isnt and probably never will be. Its easy for MS to implemend crossbuy for both pc and xbox, and they are the one who own DX and windows. There are a lot of things who speak for MS over steam.

My view on the possible scenario:

- MS brings Xbox Games Marketplace to Win 10
- It fills it with cheap or even free games already available
- It will make all the Xbox exclusive ports exclusive for Xbox Games Marketplace.
- The online portion of the game mentioned above will exclusively use XBL for free (with a veery tiny policy hidden in the T&C).
- A certain portion of the hundreds of millions of Windows users will consider it the main source for PC gaming
- It will introduce offers and discounts, free games and even apps for PC users subscribing to XBL Gold.
- One day the players will see the message "We are sorry, but to play online you have to subscribe to Xbox Live Gold" when trying to go online with the MS exclusives.

Lol, you talk about cross-buy as if Steam doesn't even do that already. The whole point of SteamOS is that games you buy on PC or Mac versions of Steam are already available (assuming hardware support). Even the Playstation version of Portal 2 was effectively cross-buy. Nearly 1000 titles are currently available for SteamOS before its even reached a full commercial release and includes some big PC franchises like Civ Beyond Earth, Total War, Metro, Football Manager and all Valve games. 

You say SteamOS will likely never be popular but people were saying that about Steam as well. I see it experiencing slow and gradual growth, which is actually all it needs. You keep your library regardless of hardware. It's the same idea as Android Play Store/iOS app store and in the long-term it works.