Does Microsoft make money from consumer gaming OS sales? Is there an onroad from that market to others -does there enterprise sales rely on gamers getting jobs and demanding microsoft? I think the author vastly overestimates how much of a market this actually is.
I think they make a bunch of money having Windows being the default installed OS on prebuilt PCs and laptops. Gaming PCs and laptops are a pretty large market included in that. There's a chance vendors/builders might start to sell cheaper options which don't include Windows installed, savings for both them and the customers.
Will have to see if that actually happens though, even as a power user myself there are still a bunch of pain points with SteamOS/steam deck that are harder to deal with than similar issues in Windows.
You don't always make money because you sell to a specific customer. Sometimes it's about support and network effect. Devices (Scanners, Printers, ...) are compatible with Windows and sometimes only Windows because that's what people use, NVIDIA drivers used to be Windows only because that's where customers were. Does Microsoft make money from these sales? No. Do they make money from having an ecosystem that everyone is supporting? Most definitely.
They make money from lots of random stuff that they advertise in Windows.
The Edge browser for instance, which pushes Bing.
Also, office applications like Word, OneNote, and OneDrive.
They’ve got an app store as well, which is not much used, though probably does bring them some money.
I think they show ads by default in the start menu. Pretty sure it even comes with certain third party applications, like Netflix, which they are no doubt paid for.
