The head of Valve says his company is working to develop for Linux, calling Microsoft's Windows 8 a "catastrophe" that will lead product manufacturers to abandon the platform.
At a gaming event in Seattle last night, as reported by AllThingsD, Valve CEO Gabe Newell said the one thing holding back Linux is video game support.
"The big problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don't realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior," Newell said, according to AllThingsD. "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."
I feel it is too early for people to be predicting how successful Windows 8 will be. I think the price drop of Windows 8 to 39.99 for upgrades from XP-7 will make people who are on Vista, XP, and 7 upgrade to 8 for slightly better Windows performance.
I read on PC blogs that Windows 8 uses less system resources like CPU, RAM, Hard drive space, and have better hardware acceleration for video cards/GPU, so it could make people with older computers meet the minimum requirements for games without feeling much lag when on low and medium quality settings.
I think if Windows 8 has an official wireless gamepad controller for playing "Games for Windows 8", and the gamepad is compatible with a lot of Microsoft games for PC like Halo, MS Flight Simulator, Age of Empires, etc it may be a pretty good PC gaming operating system for people who are used to using the Xbox Dashboard, but want to get into PC gaming since the Windows 8 user interface looks similar to the Xbox user interface because of the tiles, so plugging in your PC to a HDTV to game on the couch with a controller can be easier for PC gamers who are more used to console gaming on the Xbox with a controller.
I agree Windows will work harder to sell more Games for Windows via the MS official app store which is a icon on the desktop of the Windows 8 desktop, and MS might make it possible for users to buy PC games on Xbox Live or a similar service to latter play on their PC when they turn their PC on.
Plus, I read that Windows 8 may be able to play Xbox 360 games via an app or the Xbox emulator is built-in to Windows 8, so people can play Xbox games in Windows 8, and it maybe possible to stream PC games to the Xbox via Windows 8 with an Xbox app.
MS might also buyout some PC game developers like EA, Activision, etc, so they don't sell games for Windows on Steam and third-party games store like how Halo will not be ported to the PS3 or anyother console because Halo is owned by MS.
