And one shouldn't underestimate Valve's own offering of games. Those are among the best games ever made.
With Left4Dead, Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike, you have plenty of fun, and at least for Team Fortress 2 they regularly update the game with weekend specials, new items and new maps.
Right now it's Halloween special, with new game modes where the two teams should cooperate to kill the Horseless Headless Horseman with trips to the Underworld. It's really a laugh to play.
It's a chicken and egg problem. At least we'll soon have the chicken.
More seriously, game developpers will be much more encouraged to develop for Linux if they have a delivery system, especially given how Unity is becoming more and more popular.
This is a long play. I doubt that Valve would be doing this if they didn't have a long term belief in it's viability.
One big issue is Engine tech, typically the best game engines have been designed around Windows and Consoles. Now we have ports of Source engine and Unity3D to Linux. This can enable a whole batch of games to be ported to Linux with minimal effort.
Besides , this is a beta so intended for interested early adopters to play with rather than becoming the #1 game system overnight.
>This is a long play. I doubt that Valve would be doing this if they didn't have a long term belief in it's viability.
No their cash cow is being threatened by Windows 8 and they know that their monopoly is almost over. They have one shot to protect it and keep MS away from it for all times - turn the desktop market toward Linux.