[keyringlight]

My feeling is that Valve's approach via using wine/proton is pragmatic in terms of getting something that works for them and reduces how much they're held hostage to windows, but it's a missed opportunity to go further and decouple PC gaming from windows. As it stands they are downstream of whatever MS does to the 'reference' platform and how developers use it (because that's where the majority of users are).

I'd love to see what would happen if a consortium was formed to take responsibility for gaming on the PC platform, and I wouldn't be surprised if MS wouldn't mind abdicating maintenance especially if their xbox fortunes have waned and there's less mutual benefit for them.

[bonton89]

Valve basically tried the later approach with the initial Steam for linux push which included steam machines and the steam controller. It did have some level of initial success but clearly had lost momentum and the developer support it had seemed to fade after a few years. There were quite a few direct ports during that time though. I think they would have preferred that approach but ultimately decided it was a bridge to far.

[account42]

They didn't put a fraction of the effort into Steam Machines that they have put in the Linux ecosystem since then.

[doubled112]

Wouldn’t this hypothetical consortium need to be made up of fairly large players?

As in Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel, and friends?

I’d imagine they’re pretty happy with the status quo.