He might have worked at Microsoft for thirteen years, but Valve boss Gabe Newell isn’t a big fan of the company’s new Windows OS at all, calling it a “catastrophe” in a recent interview.
On the subject of Valve’s recent interest in Linux, Newell told All Things D that “The big problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don’t realise how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior.”
The big idea then is to put Steam on Linux so if Windows 8 bombs, the company has other options.
“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,” he explained. “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.”
Windows 8 launches in October. Steam for Linux launches whenever it’s ready. Who will triumph? Stay tuned.
Gabe Newell
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I’d switch over tomorrow if steam got all of its games working on Linux (I have about 170 of them on my steam account).
Eventually Origin would follow suite, and the only microsoft products I would ever need are Word, Excell, Access and Visio… The rest I can do with Wolfram, Thunderbird and Matlab.
To be fair, Windows 8 looks smashing on my tablet (buggy, but awesome)