[News] The Gaming Near Future

Gabe Newell of Valve has been openly venting his displeasure for newly released Windows 8. He's been quoted as saying that “I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space,” Valve engineer Drew Bliss elaborates on this at the Ubuntu Summit in Copenhagen pointing out that Apple has a pretty much a closed economy and environment with their OS app store and Windows is headed in the same direction.

It is more than obvious at this point how Steam feels about the current state of gaming with the recent comments like these. Valve who is a leader in the PC gaming community holds a lot of weight, and when they speak people listen. They are the default go to game store on this platform for good reason. I think they feel like they're being squeezed out by Apple and Microsoft.  They're essentially elbowing their way into Valve's market space.

This situation would normally turn out bad for consumers resulting in possibly multi-billion dollar court cases, broken relationships, and the gamer taking on these effects through increased prices and/or less consumer content. But fortunately for us Valve has done what I consider the single most important thing for gaming since the release of the Nintendo way back when.  Drum roll please and wait for it...  Development for Valve on Ubuntu!  It is in the beta stages right now and has been received with a lot enthusiasm.  I personally am very excited and have tried it out for myself.

Steam (beta) running on Ubuntu 12.04

Now I couldn't get any of the Source games to run through this client yet (you have to be a beta tester) but I did manage to download the World of Goo demo and play it just fine.  No issues at all.

This could be a major game changer for PC gaming.  When game developers finally figure out their is a market for gaming under the Linux platform maybe they'll stop riding their high horse and start making games for it, without excuse.  Matter of fact, I think I'll even say that if games are successfully developed for Ubuntu, you could see them as a more recognizable name with Windows and OSX.  Not only that, more and more of the average desktop user will consider Ubuntu.

Information taken from Valve Engineer Drew Bliss Explains Why They Favor Linux Over Windows
Read more at http://gamingbolt.com/valve-engineer-drew-bliss-explains-why-they-favor-linux-over-windows#rXmXHbKEOE4ifKFZ.99 Of course these are my opinions and you're free as usual to leave yours below in the comments.  Happy gaming!