Is it too little, too late? Microsoft now owns a lot of the biggest game franchises through the Activision and Bethesda acquisitions, and I wouldn't be surprised if they actively block Proton support by using UWP or Windows-specific anticheat.
> and I wouldn't be surprised if they actively block Proton support by using UWP or Windows-specific anticheat
Surely this wouldn't make any sense for them strategically? They want as many people playing and making noise about the franchises they own as possible - especially multiplayer.
No, they care about maximizing profit as a whole not about any individual franchises. Platform holders have shown again and again that they are willing to sink money into exclusives if it means they can make more money off their platform.
Possible. Although a lot of gaming companies that got bought never did amount to much after the acquisition.
If Microsoft locks down their environment, I believe they are in danger of losing their dominance on PC.
I have yet to meet a developer that likes UWP and I believe it is dead by now. There is WinUI 3, but I fail to see how they learned from their mistakes. They believe they can work it out with rebranding, but I heavily doubt it. Don't know if my info is current, but you can only deploy WinUI through their store. I just shorty looked into it, laughed a bit and went elsewhere. I have already left the MS stack behind completely.
> If Microsoft locks down their environment, I believe they are in danger of losing their dominance on PC.
I don't think Microsoft cares about dominating the PC anymore. Their continued efforts to make Windows user-hostile suggest to me that they don't want PCs to even exist. They want everyone using a locked-down walled-garden tablet OS and paying for cloud services.
Microsoft cannot politically afford such brazen anti-competitive moves. Because of accidents of history, their position is somewhat unique. They can close the platform to third-parties if they really want (although I don't think it will ever happen), but actively blocking interop efforts would directly contravene a lot of very well-established legislation.
Didn't even think about that. A part of me wants to think of Xbox as this cool company that wont prevent Linux support. But Microsoft isn't necessarily know for being overly friendly towards Linux huh
If we're strictly comparing Linux and Windows, Linux would have issues with most software (where it only runs in Proton) and the developer of some of the biggest games in the industry (Warcraft, Overwatch, Age of Empires, Wolfenstein, Flight Simulator, Call of Duty, Doom, Halo, Minecraft, Forza etc) is actively hostile or tying their games to Windows/Xbox platform specific features, I think it is a cause for concern.
The other players survive because Nintendo and Sony pour a lot of money into exclusives and have an extensive back catalog, but Valve isn't making exclusive games for Linux.
