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Why Valve Wants To Port Games To Linux: Because Windows 8 Is a Catastrophe
An anonymous reader writes "Gabe Newell wants to support Linux because he think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in PC space. He wants to move away from a closed ecosystem of Microsoft Windows 8. He recently made a rare appearance at Casual Connect, an annual videogame conference in Seattle. From the allthingsd article: 'The big problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don't realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior. We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It's a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we'll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that's true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality.' Some Linux users think that this is a win-win situation for Linux users as it will brings good game titles on the Linux system that haven't been there and it will protect steam business model from both Apple and Microsoft."
Since Windows Store comes installed with Windows 8, who's gonna be interested in publish a game with Steam? Nobody.
Funny because Halo, Call of Duty, etc. all sells 10s of millions of copies on consoles and blow away the PC sales by vast margins. Looks like your opinion means dick.
The problem isn't DirectX support, it is with having the newer DirectX versions be supported, and get proper driver support to make it all work. People complain about driver quality due to games having issues under Windows, so picture how bad a Linux implementation would end up being.