Given many new handhelds coming on the scene and general disinterest of Microsoft to support the market, do you think SteamOS will take place of default OS the same way Android did on phones some time ago?
Given many new handhelds coming on the scene and general disinterest of Microsoft to support the market, do you think SteamOS will take place of default OS the same way Android did on phones some time ago?
The reason Valve is so heavily investing in Linux is that they know that Microsoft could - in theory - flip a switch and kill their business, especially because Microsoft themselves is a competitor to Valve in the form of Xbox and Gamepass.
It’s a defensive tactic, not a money-making venture.
And realistically Microsoft has a very good moment coming up in the next few years to effectively kill Steam: Valve only delivers pre-compiled files and does not have access to source code. Therefore Valve is not only stuck with a “Windows-like environment”, they are also shackled to x86. With Apple’s M-processors reigning supreme in the laptop space with insane values for performance-to-powerdraw (and in turn heat radiation and cooling requirements), the days of x86-by-default laptops are probably numbered and more manufacturers may want to switch to ARM, to avoid unfavorable comparisons to MacBooks. With Windows for ARM Microsoft can finally kill of all traces of Win32 in WinRT, as they tried for years and force everyone to use UWP-apps from the store exclusively on ARM. Apple does leave apps behind, when updating their operating systems on a regular basis, a similar move by Microsoft wouldn’t look totally unreasonable. The switch could even happen gradually, like Apple’s Rosetta translation layer, which runs x86 apps on arm great right now, but I don’t think it will be maintained forever and support for x86 apps on macOS will end one day. Microsoft could do the same for Windows for ARM. If this happens Valve will probably have the opportunity to install games as UWP-apps, but their back catalog of Win32 .exes becomes effectively worthless. But if Win32 .exes run great through some translation layer on linux, valve can continue to sell and support their back catalog on current hardware.
Why are they shackled to anything? They will sell whatever the market supports. Linux doesn’t care what CPU it runs on and software can be compiled for anything. Valve isn’t stuck with anything, all of their stuff is virtual.
If we move to ARM, MIPS or whatever the flavour of the day will be, they’ll just follow the trend.
OTOH, Microsoft has to deal with an insane amount of legacy software in the corporate space. That’s probably the main reason Windows still sucks so much (although it did manage to get much better) when Mac OS managed to make a clean cut and start over.
Technically you are right when saying:
But in practice software is compiled from source for the environment it will run on and Valve does seldomly have access to the source code of third parties. They generally have pre-compiled .exes and the accompanying files. If the developer chooses to recompile for different architectures, then valve will probably get a new compiled binary. But what about defunct developers or publishers who don’t want to invest any more development time in old software? Additionally: No, software as complex as games cannot always be compiled for anything without throwing ungodly amounts of errors. In these cases additional development would be needed, even if Valve had access to the source code and the rights to use or recompile it, which they probably don’t have for proprietary third-party software.
This is specifically a problem for valve’s immense back catalog, brand new games will probably release as a compatible binary.
I think this is a misconception.
M-processors are not amazing because they are ARM, or because they are Apple.
They are pretty much where everyone else is al well, just one node shrink ahead, because Apple is the first in Line, because they can pay for it.
for example, Apple M1 GPU vs Steam Deck GPU, Apple has a ~60% lead (in performance measured in TFLOPs fp32), but they are TSMC N5, whereas the Steam Deck GPU is built on the N7 node, (and there was the N6 node in between those two!)
The A12 is Apples N7 SoC, and draws up to ~6W, and the GPU has roughly 1/3rd of AMD Steam Deck compute, pretty in line with power draw.
Watt for Watt, Node for Node pure performance seems just good to me, not really surpassing anything else by a lot.
I partially agree for the GPU-side of things. But while there have been iPads without active cooling for over a decade now, there has never been a competitive, high performance laptop like the current MacBook Air build on x86. I know you are right theoretically and maybe it is a solvable challenge and the priorities were just different, but whatever ARM does, it seems to run cooler than x86. Even if it is only bigLITTLE or some other shortcut.
That is indeed a good reason, but while it’s possible for Microsoft to do that, it’s extremely unlikely to ever happen.
Don’t discount it, it feels like they’ve been pushing cloud gaming and their subscription pretty hard
Not just cloud gaming, cloud Windows itself. Gaming is just a massive market now and cutting off Steam would be PR suicide if nothing else, they would only do it if they really thought there was no good alternative for gamers to turn to, but with Valve’s spearheading of Proton etc, I think it would be too risky for MS. But yeah, you never know right.
The cloud windows headlines are kinda misleading, that’s just about their business-aimed products, not windows for home users.