You're not wrong, at this hour success is as much about picking up the pieces from one of the singularly worst disasters of brand confusion we've ever seen. Even this attempted recovery is a bid to get into the lane now owned by Steam.

The SteamOS is capable of getting out of the way, which is something Microsoft is pathologically incapable of designing Windows to do. And these days I think Linux and the Linux desktop are just objectively better than Windows, and the days where Windows embodied what it meant to have when anything goes PC are long gone.

So you're left with limited options. I think a first class console experience for a wide range of storefronts is the best bet to out-steam Steam but it assumes a degree of execution capability that I don't trust Microsoft to have.