More Cloud, less Steam

Steam on Xbox?

No.

Steam on Cloud.

Microsoft moving to put Steam on Xbox is really about Valve facing the inevitable.

PC hardware is going away.

Devs have been too stubborn and haven't embraced Linux enough to keep high-end GPUs burning down the house. Microsoft is moving high-performance computing to the Cloud and hardware makers are moving to data centers. Obscene prices are aimed at industrial consumers, not home users. Valve tried with the Steam Deck, but Valve's puzzling relationship with X86 (32 or 64) has has put them behind the homogenized efficiency of a 10 year old mobile chipset powering big software sales on the Nintendo Switch.

The impending release of the Nintendo Switch 2 and the imploding financial support of local HPC parts (see Intel and AMD high performance exits) seem to share a timeline with the release of Steam on Xbox, the console pushing cloud more than any other console.

Valve bending a knee to a console without a Steam stamp on the outside is likely a sign that the old requirement of modularity, the requirement that most likely killed the Steam Box, is no longer required. Valve is no longer in a position to make demands. Steam's ability to survive depends on it's ability to cling to Windows. 

It was never the PC Master Race. It was always the Windows Master Race. Valve may be coming to that realization. Will Gabe stay to push the button?