Hmm, methinks there's just a tad more selfishness in there than meets the eye. Steam is becoming the distributor of PC games - period. Retail shelves are sparsely PC populated and you can expect all but the biggest AAA titles to never appear to begin with. If Steam wasn't so efficient at what they are doing, they wouldn't be as popular as they are.
With what little they sell in the stores, their obvious reason for the push is that it's a market without a slice for them. They refuse to sell, or even stock PC games because of the lack of sales and yet complain about the wanton PC sales online. Steam is popular due to convenience and things like the weekly and specialty sales that happen all of the time. When was the last HALO 3 half-off special you ever seen in a retail store? Won't happen.
Digital distribution is the future of game sales and we won't be needing your brick and mortar tomb for much longer.
