Last week, Valve made three major announcements that have the potential to dramatically reshape the PC gaming landscape. Taken together, these three announcements could position Steam, rather than simply the PC, as a new gaming platform. SteamOS covers platform software, Steam Machines covers platform hardware, and the Steam Controller covers the platform interface. The proposition of a new Steam platform to complement the PC, and compete with consoles, is a fascinating one, full of potential benefits for those who already play games on PCs, as well as those who don’t for whatever reason. But there are also many challenges that Valve will face if they want Steam to become a new gaming platform in and of itself.
Valve’s platform announcements have covered three components of this platform, and while what they’ve announced seems relatively modular, all three components will have to come together if Valve is to produce a viable Steam gaming platform.
The first and most obvious challenge Valve faces in shaping Steam into a gaming platform is in the area of software, specifically the operating system. When we talk about the PC as a gaming platform, by and large we’re talking about Windows PCs. The PC gaming landscape has changed a lot of the last few years, with more and more games available on non-Windows platforms. Indeed, Valve have helped to drive that shift, by developing Mac and Linux versions of their own games, and supporting multi-OS gaming through things like Steam Play. But in the main, PC games are still generally Windows games.
SteamOS promises to allow Valve, developers and gamers to break free of Windows as the basis of the PC gaming platform, and create an OS that’s built for games above all else. Breaking PC gaming free of the Windows desktop monopoly would mean no longer being beholden to Microsoft’s timetable for updates, or their choices about where to take the OS. There's little in missteps like Windows Vista, or pushing desktop touchscreens in Windows 8, that helps the cause of PC gaming. Microsoft have never really made PC gaming a priority, beyond trying to coerce users into buying new versions of Windows, for example by making DirectX 10 exclusive to Windows Vista, and making the upcoming DirectX 11.2 exclusive to Windows 8.
SteamOS would also mean PC gaming would no longer be burdened by the hassle of dealing with Windows. And let’s face it, maintaining a Windows PC is often a hassle, requiring a good deal of expertise to deal with security issues, updates and so on. It might seem odd, then, to suggest that a Linux-based alternative will be less hassle. Valve have made it clear that SteamOS will be Linux-based, but Linux has historically demanded even more expertise and effort from users to get everything working and keep it that way. However, what Valve are promising with SteamOS is a software platform that’s built for PC gaming. Having a Linux-based architecture means SteamOS can draw on Linux’s well-established record for security and stability, and Valve can focus on streamlining the experience for users, drawing on their well-established record for streamlining the process of buying, downloading, patching and playing PC games. It’s worth remembering what it used to be like having to hunt down patches for PC games, and download them from third-party sites, before Steam came along and made all of that literally effortless. There’s no reason to think Valve won’t bring that same ethos to developing SteamOS.
There are many reasons Windows continues to dominate as a PC gaming OS, but the biggest is probably the Windows-exclusivity of the DirectX API. DirectX – specifically, the 3D graphics component, Direct3D – is the API that most PC games use to actually render and display 3D graphics, and Direct X has dominated PC gaming since the early-to-mid 00s. There are advantages and disadvantages to using DirectX, such as its use in the Xbox, Xbox 360 and upcoming Xbox One platforms, but the specific reasons for DirectX’s dominance aren’t really relevant. The point is that to play most PC games of the last ten years requires DirectX. And because the API is exclusive to Windows, this has generally meant any game developed using DirectX is also Windows-exclusive.
If Valve want people to be able to play most PC games on SteamOS rather than Windows, they need to get around the requirement for DirectX. There are several avenues for doing this that are already obvious from Valve’s current position: an alternative API, DirectX compatibility, and streaming.
