Rob Pardo, Executive Vice President of Game Design at Blizzard Entertainment seems to be in agreement with Gabe Newell’s recent outspoken comments about Windows 8. "Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space."

There are a handful of household names in the PC gaming industry that when they say something about their subject, people had better stop and listen. Ian Livingstone, Peter Molyneux, Sid Meier, Felix and of course Gabe Newell, Head Honcho at Valve. Gabe went on to say...

“I think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people.”

This all came out during an interview with Ed Fries, Former VP of game publishing at Microsoft. One of the areas of the new Windows 8 system that Gabe Newell seemed most vocal about was the idea of the new Windows Store.

In the Win 8 Store developers will be able to sell their apps in a similar fashion to Apple and Google App stores directly to users via Win 8. Obviously this lucrative area of the market is something that the once dominant giant Microsoft has been left behind in and is looking to play catch up. Gabe’s concern seems to be that Steam will have to be re-developed to fit in with the Metro Apps store and will have to then go through the Microsoft App store sales channel for every Steam sale. It sounds like Microsoft would then take 30% of every sale.

But we do not only have to turn to Windows for our operating system needs, we could also use the free Linux OS. However, Linux does not come with the powerful hardware to software suite known as DirectX that Microsoft have built. DirectX is a collection of software applications, Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic and so on that are used to help software communicate on a set of standards with our PC hardware.

QI - Here is something quite interesting, the X in the DirectX name is a shorthand for the name of the specific software application, Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic etc. And so DirectX refers to the collection of software. This same X was then used at the beginning of a famous console box name that utilizes this same DirectX software. That’s right, Xbox.

Anyway, I digress. Just to be clear, Linux does use OpenGL, which is similar in purpose to DirectX. The roundup to this is that, while Microsoft look to take 30% of each app sales via the Win 8 Store the Windows OS platform that we know and use is in fear of becoming isolated as a development platform and that may not be good for gaming growth.

Now don’t even get me started on the Windows 8 Metro interface. Metro feels as though MS have either abandoned the desktop PC or it highlights how out of touch they are with what makes the PC and their OS stand out from the crowd. MS have been struggling to play catch up with Google and Apple as the brands to beat for some years now. Why do you think that is? Both Google and Apple have a marketing magnetism that appeals to people, whereas Microsoft still feels like it is run by suits who chase money and miss the point of their target audience. Do you think they are about to lose their powerful hold over the only real operating system choice? I can tell you it will only take a moment and one of the other giants will step in to claim it.

So let’s hear it from the real gamer on the street, whats your verdict on Windows 8, are you going to switch to it or have you already tried the early versions and what did you think?

This article was written with Mark