Cross-buy has potential to be big I'd think... then again, people don't seem to keen on other digital distribution methods that aren't Steam or GOG or whatever. People seem to hate publisher retail clients like EA Origins or Uplay. Though, I wonder if this cross-buy method will get traction. I'm already buying my Xbox One games digitally, it's nice to know if I get a gaming PC down the line that I'll have a nice collection of ready to play games at my disposal. I'm not sure PC gamers will feel the same way though, buying PC games on the Microsoft store/client to have access to the console versions if they should ever get one; kind of doubtful the attraction will go the other way.
Also, let's say it does get traction, surely services like Steam won't like MS trying to take away some of their market for digital distribution. I'm curious whether Valve will team up with Sony like they did for the Portal 2 release and do a Sony/Steam cross-buy system. If that were to happen it'd be a big blow to Microsoft, but in the long run it'd be better for the consumers to have such a feature.
From MS's end they should try to beat Sony to the punch by trying to bridge into the service for rights sharing with Steam. I think as doubtful as an MS/Valvepartnership is, if MS gives Valve a substantial chunk of of it's gaming revenue streams then maybe Valve can be a benefit to MS on other ends like managing their game sales and marketplace pricing.
But, realistically I don't see Valve and MS ever partnering up. I like MS, but from a popularity contest MS is toxic, and it could hurt Valve's bottom line. And Valve was rather skeptical (even alarmist) of MS after Windows 8 thinking they were going to go for a controlled operating system that wasn't open, hence they developed the Steam OS, Linux client, and worked on Linux compatibility... either that, or, they always wanted to get the Steambox rolling, and all the Linux stuff was avoiding paying the licensing costs to MS for Windows to make games compatible (or maybe all the above).
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