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Windows 8 Passes Vista, Hits 5.1% Market Share
An anonymous reader writes "With the first half of 2013 now over, Windows 8 continues to grow its share steadily but slowly, while Windows XP and Vista decline. In fact, Windows 8 has now passed the 5 percent mark, as well as surpassed the market share of its predecessor's predecessor, Windows Vista. The latest market share data from Net Applications shows that June 2013 was an impressive one for Windows 8, which gained 0.83 percentage points (from 4.27 percent to 5.10 percent) while Windows 7 fell 0.48 percentage points (from 44.85 percent to 44.37 percent)."
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
Gee, I wonder why they've stopped showing DirectX / OS numbers? Everything else loads fine, but anything that might indicate operating system choice is suspiciously absent. Real talk: Linux + Steam has exactly fuckall users because exactly fuckall games run on it. Gaben may have made it a personal mission to make sure all their recent and upcoming games run on Linux, but none of the other publishers ever will. It's assloads more work and they don't see any benefit.
Valve owns Steam. They lose 0% when listing a game on Steam. They lose 30% when listing a game on the Windows 8 store (or whatever they call it). Valve would rather not do that, but if consumers get used to the Windows 8 store (as they have gotten used to Apple's, Google's, and Amazon's), Valve will be seeing a hit to their bottom line if they don't.
For any other publisher who doesn't run their own store, it's 30% to be listed on Steam, the Windows 8 store, Origin, whatever, so there's nothing lost by listing everywhere. Even retail has similar margins built in when you consider all costs. Unless you run your own store, you need your shit to be listed everywhere.
But getting your shit to run on Linux (or Mac) isn't worth the cost for the vast majority of developers. The instant MS announced their own store, Valve gained a major financial interest against Windows. Their recent, half-baked Linux push is a direct result of that financial interest. The truth is, however, that Linux isn't going to bring them additional revenue. If they actually want to fight against the Windows 8 store they could, you know, compete. Take a lower percentage of all sales. Charge less for game submission and updates. Get rid of the terrible, terrible submission process for "Indie" developers (are they still calling it Greenlight?). Or they could try something more antagonistic like fucking around with access to the Steam API, charging more/less based on where you list your game, etc. But so far all they've done is say "Boo Windows 8! Yay Linux! Here are a handful of games.".
I'd certainly be pleased if there were more decent games for Linux as I would then have more options. But their recent effort in that regard is nothing than a reaction to the Windows 8 store, and it's the wrong reaction. They should be taking a much lower cut of all sales, plain and simple. It's absurd that digital stores take the same cut as retail, and only competition can fix that.