Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix
I would be really excited by this news 3 our so years ago.<p>But it's to late now. Valve missed their chance. Gaming is moving away from desktop. In fact, while gaming is increasing extremely fast overall, desktop is actually setting decrease on revenue. It's the worst time to invest in it.<p>It won't help valve, and it won't help us Linux gamers. Game studios won't suddenly go back to support dying desktop only because steam now has a Linux client. So the store will be empty.<p>This is also a move aiming towards the new steam box. But that's also a bad move. Console is the second worse gaming platform now, after desktop. It's days are also numbered. While I love Valve, gaming and Linux. These won't work well together anytime soon.<p>The good news for us Linux gamers is that browser and mobile are on an absurd.fast rise. While we still don't see many AAA  titles on the browser, that's much closer to reality than AAA titles on steam for Linux. At the end of the day, w don't need steam for Linux. Gaming in general is moving in our direction. The quality of games in our browser and our phones (the future consoles) are close to make desktop irrelevant.<p>edit: here's some stats that both console and PC game markets are decreasing. From EA's sec filing:<p><a href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/712515/000119312511186744/dex992.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/712515/00011931251118...</a><p>I didn't really thought of putting it because I thought this was ubiquitous knowledge everyone would agree with. But maybe that's just because I'm in the industry and always looking for market numbers every month.<p>The industry is moving away from these formats and moving towards mobile. The remaining anecdotes are just a consequence of old incumbents having a hard time adapting. The next dominant gaming consoles will be running Android and iOS. Simply because of the huge size of the app stores and user base.