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Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

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Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#161

Post by pjmlp »

kemayo wrote: post #3
CuriouslyC wrote: post #2

Valve has a spear lined up at so much of big tech right now it's honestly impressive they've done it in stealth for so long. Google, Microsoft and Apple are all in the crosshairs in a big way, and I don't think they can avoid the blow that's coming without cannibalizing their margins.

I'm not sure they've got Apple targeted so much, because Apple has been so thoroughly not-invested in gaming. The place they're closest to colliding is VR, but Apple's Vision headset is doing something really different from Valve's VR products, which are far more directly lined up against Meta's Oculus. Valve could branch into Apple's areas, but they don't seem particularly interested in doing so yet. EDIT: rather, A…

If Android had half as supported SDK game stuff like Swift and Objective-C have on Apple platforms.

Apple cares about gaming on their iDevices and related Apple store profits, macOS not so much.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#162

Post by pjmlp »

phantasmish wrote: post #13
kemayo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure they've got Apple targeted so much, because Apple has been so thoroughly not-invested in gaming. The place they're closest to colliding is VR, but Apple's Vision headset is doing something really different from Valve's VR products, which are far more directly lined up against Meta's Oculus. Valve could branch into Apple's areas, but they don't seem particularly interested in doing so yet. EDIT: rather, A…

They’d need to improve desktop Linux a lot to threaten Apple. It’s far more tolerable on their relatively tightly-controlled and stable hardware platforms than it is elsewhere, but it’s still a features-weak jankfest compared to macOS. I mean user facing features relevant to any desktop user, not “docker is native on it” or other developer-only stuff—and for the record Linux was my main desktop OS for about a decade,…

It starts that I can buy Apple hardware at any European consumer shop, GNU/Linux hardware hardly, with exception of Raspeberry PIs on the electronics section.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#163

Post by pjmlp »

dartharva wrote: post #22
CuriouslyC wrote: post #2

Valve has a spear lined up at so much of big tech right now it's honestly impressive they've done it in stealth for so long. Google, Microsoft and Apple are all in the crosshairs in a big way, and I don't think they can avoid the blow that's coming without cannibalizing their margins.

How are Google and Apple in its crosshairs (article's framing notwithstanding)? From what I see, Microsoft is the only one they have been gunning for, and even that behemoth is looking to get out of the way. Their Xbox platform has practically imploded, and they have specifically designed Windows 11 to be less of a PC operating system and more of an ads platform and a cross-selling channel for their AI/cloud offering…

The games console yes, however people forget that Xbox is also a brand under Microsoft Games Studios, which happens to be one of the biggest publishers due to the amount of studios that are owned by Microsoft.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#164

Post by doublerabbit »

ryandvm wrote: post #34
ZeroConcerns wrote: post #5

Well, Valve got seriously concerned about the Windows Store, like, a decade ago, since that could have reduced the stranglehold of Steam on the gaming marketplace. Turns out that the usual Microsoft incompetence-and-ADHD have kind-of eliminated that threat all by itself. Also: turns out that, if you put enough effort into it, Linux is actually a quite-usable gaming platform. Still: are consumers better off today than…

I tried to use Microsoft's Game Pass and the Xbox store on a Windows machine with multiple users. It was astoundingly unusable for sharing Microsoft's own game within my own household with my own family members. Completely broken user experience. It's not hard to believe that Steam was able to thrive because Microsoft has just done an amazingly bad job with this. I've been in software dev for 20 years and it still ba…

It's not the engineers at fault here but C-suits. Those who are out of touch or stuck up their arse within their own world. Believing their own delusional vision is it based on that they have a toddler who's four.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#165

Post by arielcostas »

skylurk wrote: post #145
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you need a Microsoft account to use the store?

Can you use Windows without a Microsoft account?

Yes. At least in 11 Pro installs, you can just say you'll be joining to a domain, create a local admin account and never actually join it. Then to create other users you can do it via the command line, or probably through the GUI after telling it you don't want one a couple of times

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#166

Post by arielcostas »

doublerabbit wrote: post #164
ryandvm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to use Microsoft's Game Pass and the Xbox store on a Windows machine with multiple users. It was astoundingly unusable for sharing Microsoft's own game within my own household with my own family members. Completely broken user experience. It's not hard to believe that Steam was able to thrive because Microsoft has just done an amazingly bad job with this. I've been in software dev for 20 years and it still ba…

It's not the engineers at fault here but C-suits. Those who are out of touch or stuck up their arse within their own world. Believing their own delusional vision is it based on that they have a toddler who's four.

I'd say engineers are at fault for bugs and performance issues, as well as poor UX (not counting what's made to sell you something or collect your data)

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#167

Post by doublerabbit »

arielcostas wrote: post #166
doublerabbit wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the engineers at fault here but C-suits. Those who are out of touch or stuck up their arse within their own world. Believing their own delusional vision is it based on that they have a toddler who's four.

I'd say engineers are at fault for bugs and performance issues, as well as poor UX (not counting what's made to sell you something or collect your data)

It can be the engineers issue, sure. Hire the wrong crew and you're sunk. However, while I might be bias, what do you do when the higher-execs don't give you time / space to fix the bugs, performance issues? No one writes genius code from day one of a project.

I've had to aggressively pitch to execs who've totally ignored the fact that $app is vulnerable. Would result in fines and if we optimized it could be pushed to milk further money offering X feature. I was denied because it's a waste of time, cost and "didn't provide anything for the company".

After finally persuading them and getting the classic response of "Oh!, why didn't you say so" three weeks later was fired for making the company waste money. This wasn't a small company in an industrial park.

Ever since I've turned down jobs that smell like toxicity. You can sort of see the companies stink when you enter reception.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#168

Post by quadruple »

ZeroConcerns wrote: post #5

Well, Valve got seriously concerned about the Windows Store, like, a decade ago, since that could have reduced the stranglehold of Steam on the gaming marketplace. Turns out that the usual Microsoft incompetence-and-ADHD have kind-of eliminated that threat all by itself. Also: turns out that, if you put enough effort into it, Linux is actually a quite-usable gaming platform. Still: are consumers better off today than…

I believe Valve's concerns went(or maybe go?) beyond just the Windows Store, and into "We believe Microsoft may become unable to ship a good Operating System in the future".

In a 2013 interview with Gabe Newell: "Windows 8 was like this giant sadness. It just hurts everybody in the PC business. Rather than everybody being all excited to go buy a new PC, buying new software to run on it, we’ve had a 20+ percent decline in PC sales — it’s like 'holy cow that’s not what the new generation of the operating system is supposed to do.' There’s supposed to be a 40 percent uptake, not a 20 percent decline, so that’s what really scares me. When I started using it I was like 'oh my god...' I find [Windows 8] unusable." [0]

The Windows Store probably was a part of it, sure, but looking at that quote from 2025, after having your SSD broken, your recovery unusable and your explorer laggy? It's quite bitter-sweet.

[0] https://archive.is/eBP6q#selection-3645.0-3645.729

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