I feel gamers are much more bound to Steam than they are to the Windows platform. If a game works on Linux, they could care less if it is under Windows. Most of them only use their PC for gaming, web browsing, video watching, music playing, and document writing anyway, and Ubuntu does all of that as good or better than Windows anyway.
They will happily Wubi install Ubuntu over their Windows disk the day their steam library works on it if Steam pushes them to switch. Getting the library working and the graphics drivers up to par is the bigger problem.
However steam will continue to work just like it does now on the desktop.
It's disingenuous for Gabe to talk about how much of a 'Catastrophe' Windows 8 is going to be or how touch screens are "Short-term" but leave out the fact that these fears stem from it's possible impact on Steam's bottom line
I think that the short-term is where Microsoft needs to incorporate 3rd party stores. People already have catalogs, some of them quite large, in Steam or other digital distribution services. Microsoft will either have to attract users who weren't previously attracted to digital distribution, or they'll have to support the investments that customers have already made.
Once they level the playing field (by allowing users to use Stream or the MS App Store without penalty), Microsoft can start to try and draw users away from 3rd party services. However, in the short term, it's hard to imagine them drawing users from steam and forcing those same users to abandon their investment in steam.
That's an interesting idea. It seems that a software marketplace is just going to become a part of the computing platform. It would be cool if some platforms would open up their marketplaces to other vendors. The "Steam" store in the Windows App Store. It makes the marketplace more like a Mall and individual providers more like stores.
It may or may not happen, but I like the idea of having multiple options.
They will happily Wubi install Ubuntu over their Windows disk the day their steam library works on it if Steam pushes them to switch. Getting the library working and the graphics drivers up to par is the bigger problem.