Actually no, all of this stuff is over a year old to me and I'm still pissed off. I've been holding it back for a year, so let me vent. Or not. Whatever.
I live in a world where Intel makes Windows-only processors. I had hoped I would die before that day came. I am disappointed.
Until Intel stops making Windows-only processors, every Intel processor article is also a Windows article and we must drag out the "Microsoft business practices" dead horse for another flogging. Mobile, desktop, server, it doesn't matter. It's policy I'm afraid, and nothing can be done about it. Intel's own fault really. They tainted themselves with that brush.
Microsoft was a monopoly. Google isn't yet. Microsoft's mission was to prevent progress they didn't control. Google's is to create something new and wonderful. It is different.
In a few years when Android is all you can get in the market, then it will be the same thing. But not yet.
The 1 percent Linux hobbyist market has miraculously changed into the 50 percent Android market in the last two years. Chip makers should care about that.
Maybe this graph will be helpful. It ends in 2011. We know that in 2012 the "apple" portion increased by 50%, and the "android" portion doubled while the "PC" portion stayed the same.
Keep telling yourself that. That will make it all better, that you're not participating in the future because these new things were out of scope of the question put.
You can choose not to believe me if you want. I have a good history of being right on these things here, going back over a decade. I am seldom wrong, but it does occasionally happen. No prophet is perfect.
"More like Microsoft has a chance of created a walled garden that beats Valve's walled garden."
No, Microsoft owns the OS and can make it as incompatible with Valve's software as they made it incompatible with the software from dozens of others including Borland, Lotus, WordPerfect and others. Gabe Newell knows this because he was actually there and participated in this activity as a Microsoft employee. He knew this was coming and prepared for it many years ago.
If Microsoft wants to build game cred after they drive their 90% gaming revenue share partner Valve off, they're going to have to bring their A game.
Losing Valve and Steam though, that is done and over with. Microsoft breached faith and designated Valve's revenues a target. Gabe knows better than to slowly roast on that fire. He's a smart cookie.
Microsoft is welcome to whatever fraction of the 10% of gaming revenues that don't follow Gaben do. Rather than feast on the Valve pig they can knaw again over the bones of those left behind.
Dude, you're way out of your depth here. I'm feeling generous and I'm going to let this one go for now unless you post some stupid challenge reply. You probably will, and I'll have to draft the same tiresome reply I've put here a hundred times. I'm feeling perky tonight, so maybe I'll craft a special one just for you.
Windows RT and Windows 8 are still unreleased operating systems irrelevant to the discussion. Unreleased operating systems often have claims of mystical powers unbefore known. But then they come into the real world and the grease hits the skillet.
All future versions of Windows are now closed to Valve. Even future Windows Updates will break Valve's game engine for no good reason. Valve isn't going to have solid documentation for the next version of DirectX, let alone the next version of Windows. They'll be lucky if their customers can still play their games past next Patch Tuesday. Microsoft has decided that it's time to harvest Valve's customers and profits. I can now safely say that Valve isn't going to get the early access to Windows 9 they would need to stay competitive.
Since he used to work there Gabe Newell knows the signs, and is ready to deal with this issue. He knew that if he became profitable enough, this day would come.
I agree that all ISVs need to look at this issue and have a plan for when become so successful they ring Redmond's dinner bell. Except for anti-malware/antivirus vendors. Those folk really have nowhere else to go since the Windows malware ecosystem they defend against really doesn't have an analog market under any other common system.
Whether Windows 8, 9 or 10 implodes or not is irrelevant to Valve now, since they're not welcome on it anyway.
You said it yourself: Steam has 90% of the PC games revenue, and the same issue affects the other 10% too. The fraction of game sale revenue your comment applies to is therefore at best a fringe 5%. Little enough to be not relevant to the broad scope of the discussion. You're picking at nits.
Microsoft has decided that Valve has fattened itself enough to be harvested. That's how Microsoft sees the ISV market: grazing cattle, some who fail, some who wander about doing nothing but making more cattle, and a few that fatten themselves for harvest. Once Microsoft has picked a pig out of their Windows pen to roast and feast upon it's all over for Wilbur. Valve got too fat, became too tempting, so now it's their turn to be over for dinner. They are invited to the banquet. I know it. You know it. Gaben knows it. Gaben used to be there turning the pig on the spit, drizzling on the marinade, throwing an occasional log on the fire. Once that decision is made there is no going back. You can't unslaughter a pig.
Valve will now find their open chat channels to real developers slowly migrating to channels they don't have access to, their questions answered more and more cryptically. Emails will take longer and longer to come back, and the answers will become gradually more evasive. Their phone calls will more and more often go to voicemail, never to be returned. Their DirectX documentation will become more puzzling and obscure with each new version, and the patches will seem to be engineered to break the Valve game engine without any other benefit. Gaben's personal contacts will go off on sabbatical, never to return. Phone support will become worse and worse until it's finally answered by some prole in Bangalore who couldn't answer the question if he wanted to. The second Tuesday of every month will bring a new surprise for every Steam gamer, and Valve will have to start reverse-engineering the patches to correct for this as much as malware authors do. Of course they will, because Microsoft has decided that Steam and Valve are Malware because they prevent Microsoft from taking Valve's customers away. So the situation will eventually evolve that you can only play your Steam games a few days a month, or you have to turn off Microsoft updates and so have to suffer the malware that seems oddly crafted to exploit the lack. Ultimately though Valve cannot hope to overcome an OS that just doesn't want them. Naturally there will be considerable effort spent online convincing people that Steam and Valve games are buggy, glitchy, and not fun - and increasingly they will be so, so the funded commentary is just the seed of a grass-roots theme.
Again, Gabe Newell knows all of these things. It's "Microsoft hardball" and he's played this game before for both teams. He has known for many years that if he was successful enough eventually the day would come when he rang Redmond's dinner bell. He's ready.
Meanwhile OpenGL development group is probably like "Hey, Valve! How can we help you openly improve OpenGL to suit your needs? Come play with us!"
It doesn't matter if Valve can make their Linux play work. They know they have no hope of making their Windows play work now that Microsoft has decided to kill and eat them. Apple gives limited support, as they share some of these issues. They will try Linux because they must, and their Linux pitch will be "you don't have to buy it again! It works in Linux. Come play! Here, we have a pen drive you can boot to that doesn't have this buggy Windows crap." Windows in the future is as closed to Valve as if it did not exist at all. Valve can move over to Linux or they can give up all hope, fire all their developers, extract every possible dollar out of their existing customer base and close shop. That's the only other option available now. It will be years yet before the ultimate evolution, but the outcome is already clear: PC gamers will move to Linux or consoles, or Windows games that don't involve Steam and Valve.
I think Gabe Newell is smarter than that. He knew this was coming, and he has a plan.
If you like Steam games, it's time to try Linux. Or consoles.
The notion of anthropomorphizing the PC, and treating malware as a metaphor for disease isn't mine. I'm guilty of pointing out these past years that within that metaphor the Windows environment is akin to living in a pestilent cesspool equivalent to the middle ages, beset by endless plagues and cursed with an understanding of their operation so poor that quack nostrums, leeches, bloodletting, self-flagellation, witch-burning, driving off evil spirits and exorcism are the only known treatments - and they are no cure.
But I didn't invent the metaphor. Blame somebody else for that.
Gabe Newell used to work at Microsoft. He knows about Stac and Sendo, WordPerfect, Novell, Lotus, Aldus, Borland, Netscape and the entire litany of other companies Microsoft decided had had enough time to develop an interesting basket of customers to steal. He knows Microsoft has now decided to have his share, and he cannot defeat them while working on their operating system. That strategy always fails because Microsoft deliberately makes the operating system incompatible with their victims' software. Always. He knows he cannot win on Windows in the long term.
That doesn't mean he's abandoning Windows immediately. Of course not. The money's still coming in and there's no reason to throw it away. But right here in this thread are the first trickle of "increasingly glitchy, unreliable, unstable..." that eventually will become a flood not because Valve suddenly forgot how to write code, but because the ware cannot transcend an OS that deliberately undermines it. It is just not possible. It's not Gabe that's going to take Valve on Windows away from you: it's Microsoft, who will make it work worse and worse until you uninstall it.
So the man has no choice. It's this or fold your tent and retire to your private island.
No, they're porting to Linux as a hedge against the success of Windows 8. Valve has an app store they get a huge fraction of their income from. Since Windows 8 will have its own Windows Marketplace app store, Microsoft is unlikely to be friendly to Valve's store. In fact, Independent Software Vendors with valuable markets in Windows that Microsoft decides to want tend to start having issues running in Windows at all. Microsoft has decided they want Gaben's Steam marketing revenues - and probably the games money too now, and Gaben knows that once they decide that the party is over in Windows - they cannot be dissuaded, negotiated with, or convinced. He knows this because he used to work there.
So Valve needs a new platform for their game engines, games and game store to run on because Windows 8 is not going to work. Since Apple has the same app store issues and Linux doesn't, Linux it is.
The metric you are missing is that the Windows Marketplace destroys Valve's app store business model. Gaben used to work for Microsoft and he knows what that means. He has no choice but to do the hard work of building a new viable business. Otherwise it's game over. Since it's not about best return on investment anymore, but survival, your argument is invalid.
And growing logarithmically still. AMD is not alone though. Intel Atom chips are also going for the niche "mobile Windows" market that's struggling to crawl out of single digits.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually no, all of this stuff is over a year old to me and I'm still pissed off. I've been holding it back for a year, so let me vent. Or not. Whatever.
I live in a world where Intel makes Windows-only processors. I had hoped I would die before that day came. I am disappointed.
Until Intel stops making Windows-only processors, every Intel processor article is also a Windows article and we must drag out the "Microsoft business practices" dead horse for another flogging. Mobile, desktop, server, it doesn't matter. It's policy I'm afraid, and nothing can be done about it. Intel's own fault really. They tainted themselves with that brush.
Microsoft was a monopoly. Google isn't yet. Microsoft's mission was to prevent progress they didn't control. Google's is to create something new and wonderful. It is different.
In a few years when Android is all you can get in the market, then it will be the same thing. But not yet.
It's Android. A cursory search finds lots of compilers. Among 400,000 apps I imagine you will find a little of everything.
For a processor vendor to do this is a dangerous step.
The 1 percent Linux hobbyist market has miraculously changed into the 50 percent Android market in the last two years. Chip makers should care about that.
Oh look. The game changed again. http://www.techshout.com/gadgets/2012/15/motorola-hmc3260-serves-android-to-china-in-an-aio-desktop-design/
Most people have never seen a computer.
Something like 80% of the smartphones ever sold have been sold in the last two years, and aren't even due to be replaced yet. It has grown that fast.
Maybe this graph will be helpful. It ends in 2011. We know that in 2012 the "apple" portion increased by 50%, and the "android" portion doubled while the "PC" portion stayed the same.
Motorola has got you covered.
Keep telling yourself that. That will make it all better, that you're not participating in the future because these new things were out of scope of the question put.
You can choose not to believe me if you want. I have a good history of being right on these things here, going back over a decade. I am seldom wrong, but it does occasionally happen. No prophet is perfect.
"More like Microsoft has a chance of created a walled garden that beats Valve's walled garden."
No, Microsoft owns the OS and can make it as incompatible with Valve's software as they made it incompatible with the software from dozens of others including Borland, Lotus, WordPerfect and others. Gabe Newell knows this because he was actually there and participated in this activity as a Microsoft employee. He knew this was coming and prepared for it many years ago.
If Microsoft wants to build game cred after they drive their 90% gaming revenue share partner Valve off, they're going to have to bring their A game.
Losing Valve and Steam though, that is done and over with. Microsoft breached faith and designated Valve's revenues a target. Gabe knows better than to slowly roast on that fire. He's a smart cookie.
Microsoft is welcome to whatever fraction of the 10% of gaming revenues that don't follow Gaben do. Rather than feast on the Valve pig they can knaw again over the bones of those left behind.
And that is the end for both Intel and AMD. I'm OK with that.
Dude, you're way out of your depth here. I'm feeling generous and I'm going to let this one go for now unless you post some stupid challenge reply. You probably will, and I'll have to draft the same tiresome reply I've put here a hundred times. I'm feeling perky tonight, so maybe I'll craft a special one just for you.
Windows RT and Windows 8 are still unreleased operating systems irrelevant to the discussion. Unreleased operating systems often have claims of mystical powers unbefore known. But then they come into the real world and the grease hits the skillet.
Windows 9 on the other hand....
All future versions of Windows are now closed to Valve. Even future Windows Updates will break Valve's game engine for no good reason. Valve isn't going to have solid documentation for the next version of DirectX, let alone the next version of Windows. They'll be lucky if their customers can still play their games past next Patch Tuesday. Microsoft has decided that it's time to harvest Valve's customers and profits. I can now safely say that Valve isn't going to get the early access to Windows 9 they would need to stay competitive.
Since he used to work there Gabe Newell knows the signs, and is ready to deal with this issue. He knew that if he became profitable enough, this day would come.
I agree that all ISVs need to look at this issue and have a plan for when become so successful they ring Redmond's dinner bell. Except for anti-malware/antivirus vendors. Those folk really have nowhere else to go since the Windows malware ecosystem they defend against really doesn't have an analog market under any other common system.
Whether Windows 8, 9 or 10 implodes or not is irrelevant to Valve now, since they're not welcome on it anyway.
You said it yourself: Steam has 90% of the PC games revenue, and the same issue affects the other 10% too. The fraction of game sale revenue your comment applies to is therefore at best a fringe 5%. Little enough to be not relevant to the broad scope of the discussion. You're picking at nits.
Microsoft has decided that Valve has fattened itself enough to be harvested. That's how Microsoft sees the ISV market: grazing cattle, some who fail, some who wander about doing nothing but making more cattle, and a few that fatten themselves for harvest. Once Microsoft has picked a pig out of their Windows pen to roast and feast upon it's all over for Wilbur. Valve got too fat, became too tempting, so now it's their turn to be over for dinner. They are invited to the banquet. I know it. You know it. Gaben knows it. Gaben used to be there turning the pig on the spit, drizzling on the marinade, throwing an occasional log on the fire. Once that decision is made there is no going back. You can't unslaughter a pig.
Valve will now find their open chat channels to real developers slowly migrating to channels they don't have access to, their questions answered more and more cryptically. Emails will take longer and longer to come back, and the answers will become gradually more evasive. Their phone calls will more and more often go to voicemail, never to be returned. Their DirectX documentation will become more puzzling and obscure with each new version, and the patches will seem to be engineered to break the Valve game engine without any other benefit. Gaben's personal contacts will go off on sabbatical, never to return. Phone support will become worse and worse until it's finally answered by some prole in Bangalore who couldn't answer the question if he wanted to. The second Tuesday of every month will bring a new surprise for every Steam gamer, and Valve will have to start reverse-engineering the patches to correct for this as much as malware authors do. Of course they will, because Microsoft has decided that Steam and Valve are Malware because they prevent Microsoft from taking Valve's customers away. So the situation will eventually evolve that you can only play your Steam games a few days a month, or you have to turn off Microsoft updates and so have to suffer the malware that seems oddly crafted to exploit the lack. Ultimately though Valve cannot hope to overcome an OS that just doesn't want them. Naturally there will be considerable effort spent online convincing people that Steam and Valve games are buggy, glitchy, and not fun - and increasingly they will be so, so the funded commentary is just the seed of a grass-roots theme.
Again, Gabe Newell knows all of these things. It's "Microsoft hardball" and he's played this game before for both teams. He has known for many years that if he was successful enough eventually the day would come when he rang Redmond's dinner bell. He's ready.
Meanwhile OpenGL development group is probably like "Hey, Valve! How can we help you openly improve OpenGL to suit your needs? Come play with us!"
It doesn't matter if Valve can make their Linux play work. They know they have no hope of making their Windows play work now that Microsoft has decided to kill and eat them. Apple gives limited support, as they share some of these issues. They will try Linux because they must, and their Linux pitch will be "you don't have to buy it again! It works in Linux. Come play! Here, we have a pen drive you can boot to that doesn't have this buggy Windows crap." Windows in the future is as closed to Valve as if it did not exist at all. Valve can move over to Linux or they can give up all hope, fire all their developers, extract every possible dollar out of their existing customer base and close shop. That's the only other option available now. It will be years yet before the ultimate evolution, but the outcome is already clear: PC gamers will move to Linux or consoles, or Windows games that don't involve Steam and Valve.
I think Gabe Newell is smarter than that. He knew this was coming, and he has a plan.
If you like Steam games, it's time to try Linux. Or consoles.
The notion of anthropomorphizing the PC, and treating malware as a metaphor for disease isn't mine. I'm guilty of pointing out these past years that within that metaphor the Windows environment is akin to living in a pestilent cesspool equivalent to the middle ages, beset by endless plagues and cursed with an understanding of their operation so poor that quack nostrums, leeches, bloodletting, self-flagellation, witch-burning, driving off evil spirits and exorcism are the only known treatments - and they are no cure.
But I didn't invent the metaphor. Blame somebody else for that.
Gabe Newell used to work at Microsoft. He knows about Stac and Sendo, WordPerfect, Novell, Lotus, Aldus, Borland, Netscape and the entire litany of other companies Microsoft decided had had enough time to develop an interesting basket of customers to steal. He knows Microsoft has now decided to have his share, and he cannot defeat them while working on their operating system. That strategy always fails because Microsoft deliberately makes the operating system incompatible with their victims' software. Always. He knows he cannot win on Windows in the long term.
That doesn't mean he's abandoning Windows immediately. Of course not. The money's still coming in and there's no reason to throw it away. But right here in this thread are the first trickle of "increasingly glitchy, unreliable, unstable..." that eventually will become a flood not because Valve suddenly forgot how to write code, but because the ware cannot transcend an OS that deliberately undermines it. It is just not possible . It's not Gabe that's going to take Valve on Windows away from you: it's Microsoft, who will make it work worse and worse until you uninstall it.
So the man has no choice. It's this or fold your tent and retire to your private island.
No, they're porting to Linux as a hedge against the success of Windows 8. Valve has an app store they get a huge fraction of their income from. Since Windows 8 will have its own Windows Marketplace app store, Microsoft is unlikely to be friendly to Valve's store. In fact, Independent Software Vendors with valuable markets in Windows that Microsoft decides to want tend to start having issues running in Windows at all. Microsoft has decided they want Gaben's Steam marketing revenues - and probably the games money too now, and Gaben knows that once they decide that the party is over in Windows - they cannot be dissuaded, negotiated with, or convinced. He knows this because he used to work there.
So Valve needs a new platform for their game engines, games and game store to run on because Windows 8 is not going to work. Since Apple has the same app store issues and Linux doesn't, Linux it is.
The metric you are missing is that the Windows Marketplace destroys Valve's app store business model. Gaben used to work for Microsoft and he knows what that means. He has no choice but to do the hard work of building a new viable business. Otherwise it's game over. Since it's not about best return on investment anymore, but survival, your argument is invalid.
And growing logarithmically still. AMD is not alone though. Intel Atom chips are also going for the niche "mobile Windows" market that's struggling to crawl out of single digits.
Fine. You can pendrive boot Ubuntu when you want to use Steam if Ubuntu isn't your preference. A 16GB USB drive costs $15.
Your mistake is believing in an absolutely trustworthy source. There is no such thing.