Steam on Linux is a strategic move for Valve. They have enjoyed success on the Windows and Mac platforms for years and now they have recently announced that the penguin crowd will get to enjoy the games (no, not the Olymic ones).
Why am I even bothering to point this out? Windows 8 is lurking, that's why.. and Gabe Newell, the boss at Valve, knows it. Speaking at the recent Casual Connect conference in Seattle, Gabe expressed his concerns and criticisms of Windows 8 and in particularly the new Windows Store.
Why? Because in order to make the Windows Store a success, Microsoft needs to block the competition, just like Apple does with its App/Mac stores. As Steam is an online store itself for gamers, this is where its going to hurt Valve as potentially, no more Steam on Windows.
Microsoft could very well only have games that link to its own XBox system. This makes sense as a business and to up-sell to existing Windows customers.
Gabe Newell worked at Microsoft for 13 years before he started up Valve, and its here where they have recently embraced the penguins as a "hedging strategy" to further gain customers. He is worried that potentially losing the Windows customer base will cause lasting damage to their own customer base. I'm sure he thought that when he said "Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space."
Now think about this...
Steam has an average of 4 million users connected at any given time. Windows has an average desktop market share of, say 80%. That's 3 million gamers. Now suddenly, Steam is no longer available on Windows, but it is on Linux.
Will those gamers switch? Or even try? Some will move to a console, some to a Mac. But some, lets say a optimistic 30% or 1 million of those start using Linux, just for Steam? That's a lot.
The Year Of the Linux Desktop? No seriously... stop laughing, it may happen.
From Wikipedia:
The project and software are commonly known as OpenOffice, but this term is a trademark held by a company in the Netherlands co-founded by Wouter Hanegraaff and is also in use by Orange UK,[8] requiring the project to adopt OpenOffice.org as its formal name.
I am surprise that no-one here has mentioned the excellent FortiClient software that is free of charge and includes not just AV, but also a firewall and IPSec and SSL VPN clients. I have found it to be very lightweight and uses little resources.
http://www.fortinet.com/products/endpoint/forticlient.html
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Apologies, it was out of context.
I meant that 1 million potential new Linux desktop users was a lot, not 1 million Windows users.
I just posted this on my blog...
Steam on Linux is a strategic move for Valve. They have enjoyed success on the Windows and Mac platforms for years and now they have recently announced that the penguin crowd will get to enjoy the games (no, not the Olymic ones).
Why am I even bothering to point this out? Windows 8 is lurking, that's why.. and Gabe Newell, the boss at Valve, knows it. Speaking at the recent Casual Connect conference in Seattle, Gabe expressed his concerns and criticisms of Windows 8 and in particularly the new Windows Store.
Why?
Because in order to make the Windows Store a success, Microsoft needs to block the competition, just like Apple does with its App/Mac stores. As Steam is an online store itself for gamers, this is where its going to hurt Valve as potentially, no more Steam on Windows.
Microsoft could very well only have games that link to its own XBox system. This makes sense as a business and to up-sell to existing Windows customers.
Gabe Newell worked at Microsoft for 13 years before he started up Valve, and its here where they have recently embraced the penguins as a "hedging strategy" to further gain customers. He is worried that potentially losing the Windows customer base will cause lasting damage to their own customer base. I'm sure he thought that when he said "Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space."
Now think about this...
Steam has an average of 4 million users connected at any given time.
Windows has an average desktop market share of, say 80%. That's 3 million gamers.
Now suddenly, Steam is no longer available on Windows, but it is on Linux.
Will those gamers switch? Or even try?
Some will move to a console, some to a Mac. But some, lets say a optimistic 30% or 1 million of those start using Linux, just for Steam? That's a lot.
The Year Of the Linux Desktop? No seriously... stop laughing, it may happen.
From Wikipedia: The project and software are commonly known as OpenOffice, but this term is a trademark held by a company in the Netherlands co-founded by Wouter Hanegraaff and is also in use by Orange UK,[8] requiring the project to adopt OpenOffice.org as its formal name.
I am surprise that no-one here has mentioned the excellent FortiClient software that is free of charge and includes not just AV, but also a firewall and IPSec and SSL VPN clients. I have found it to be very lightweight and uses little resources. http://www.fortinet.com/products/endpoint/forticlient.html