But doesn't this acquisition put MS in a much stronger position, and isn't the Deck a direct competitor to MS hardware? MS now has a massive game catalog and I can't see any reason they would want to allow Valve to access it on their own console. Maybe MS will tolerate Steam near term, but you can't tell me that MS enjoys letting Valve take a cut of every sale, and with so many huge titles they can absolutely force users into whatever store they want (and limit them to whatever platform they want).
I don't know why anybody would give Microsoft of all companies the benefit of the doubt on this front.
I don't know. If they were so bent out of shape that Valve takes a cut of every sale, they could have stopped at any point before now. If anything would force people to use Microsoft's storefront it would have been a new well-reviewed Halo game, but nope, there it is for sale on Steam. And that makes sense to me -- withdrawing from the predominant PC storefront would be a gamble that might not pay off, as anyone who doesn't wish to buy direct from Microsoft is a loss of $60*0.7 = $42 that they could've won buy selling on Steam.
Maybe the calculus changes as they eat up publishers and grow their catalog, but traditionally Microsoft's storefronts haven't done particularly well.
I don't know why anybody would give Microsoft of all companies the benefit of the doubt on this front.