If SteamOS comes to dominate the handheld market, I could see them being forced to make an API so that other stores like Epic and GOG can have the same quality of integration in the non-desktop interface.
If you have two products that are both the best at their respective thing and you tightly integrate them, it makes it incredibly difficult for a competitor to match you. That is abusing a monopoly in each space to benefit the other.
The handheld PC market is still small. Nobody else in the digital space has taken it seriously yet.
If you look at iOS, you’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s effectively two products, a piece of hardware and a digital store. To beat it, you have to beat both the hardware and the store at the same time. It took the entire mobile hardware industry forming an alliance with one of the largest software companies in the world to even try to compete with it.
If SteamOS comes to dominate the handheld market, I could see them being forced to make an API so that other stores like Epic and GOG can have the same quality of integration in the non-desktop interface.
If you have two products that are both the best at their respective thing and you tightly integrate them, it makes it incredibly difficult for a competitor to match you. That is abusing a monopoly in each space to benefit the other.
Neither of them has even tried to distribute their own store as a Flatpak. That doesn’t strike me as Valve abusing a monopoly position.
The handheld PC market is still small. Nobody else in the digital space has taken it seriously yet.
If you look at iOS, you’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s effectively two products, a piece of hardware and a digital store. To beat it, you have to beat both the hardware and the store at the same time. It took the entire mobile hardware industry forming an alliance with one of the largest software companies in the world to even try to compete with it.