Comment by pjmlp 6 days ago
Microsoft controls Windows and DirectX, Valve only gets to play until Windows landlord allows it.
DR-DOS, OS/2 and EEE PC.
Lets see if SteamOS makes the list as well, this is after all round two, Steam Machines didn't go that well.
They now own Activision-Blizzard-King, which even now (new Battle.net) is still better than GFWD ever was.
> Microsoft controls Windows and DirectX, Valve only gets to play until Windows landlord allows it.
DirectX has to stay reasonably close to Vulkan. And Vulkan is not an afterthought for graphics card manufacturers, quite unlike OpenGL of yore.
And Win32 (sans Vulkan/DX) is mostly feature-complete for gaming purposes. Manufacturers can just target the current state of Win32 for a decade more, if not even longer.
> It certainly is, in what concerns NVidia, they keep innovating first with Microsoft on DirectX, and then eventually come up with Vulkan extensions.
I don't get that impression. I can't remember the last significant feature that was present in DX first, and not immediately or shortly available in Vulkan.
The Steam Deck is basically the successor to the Steam Machines. The actual hardware didn't go that well, but they laid the foundation in software for what we have now.
So, in a way, the Steam Machines were a great success.
Also, Valve has (for better and worse) far more power and control in the gaming ecosystem than most companies Microsoft has to deal with.