MSFT has done this by buying itself into the graphic API market long ago. Since then the last two main graphic hardware vendor have been poorly receptive to develop drivers for any other platform.

Hopefully, Valve OS's initiative might bend this and allow the Linux world to be at least on par with MSFT when it comes to graphic drivers. Considering that from the three main console out there, both the Playstation and the Nintendo are using a flavor or another of OpenGL, there is some hope for the future of alternative to MSFT outside the office and MSFT centric software development.