Microsoft is a gaming company who owns a console, runs a store and also owns an OS, which gives them the ability to push new standards such as DirectX 12.
The ability for Microsoft to use these synergies to swoop in and take the PC gaming market from companies such as Steam as been giving Gabe Newell nightmares for more than a year.
Steam's latest OS share numbers will only cause those nightmares to intensify, as Windows 10 starts to dominate the OS charts for their service, being used by 44.46% of all their users and 47% of all PC users.
With the free upgrade offer coming to an end I suspect this number will see another big boost over the next 30 days, which could be bad news for Steam, as the majority of their users will now come with the Windows Store pre-installed.
Microsoft has been making an effort to win gamers over to the Windows Store, with innovations such as PlayAnywhere, which would allow users to buy a game on the Xbox and play it on their PC and vice versa, and also working to remove the objections PC gamers to have to using the store, such as the recent Vsync issue and support for mods.
While Gabe Newell mainly complained about Microsoft locking other companies out of Windows 10 (which Microsoft has vociferously denied) it is clear to me that Microsoft would not have to do this to firmly take control of the Windows gaming ecosystem over all their devices.
Do our readers agree that Steam should be worried? Let us know below.
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