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Not that anyone gives a rip what a schmoe thinks, but I played a right decent number of games this year and wrote up a summary of what I thought were my games of the year. The catch is that I'm playing games not just for the PS2, but also for platforms that are no longer supported and games that have been out for years, but are new to me. So my games of the year included GTA3 and Vice City, but also Monster Rancher 2 for the PSX and Donkey Kong for the GameBoy and Necronomicon Pinball (import) for the Saturn.

I'd love to hear from gamers that keep similar websites about their gaming habits.

Not that anyone gives a rip what a schmoe thinks, but I played a right decent number of games this year and wrote up a summary of what I thought were my games of the year. The catch is that I'm playing games not just for the PS2, but also for platforms that are no longer supported and games that have been out for years, but are new to me. So my games of the year included GTA3 and Vice City, but also Monster Rancher 2 for the PSX and Donkey Kong for the GameBoy and Necronomicon Pinball (import) for the Saturn.

I'd love to hear from gamers that keep similar websites about their gaming habits.

Not that anyone gives a rip what a schmoe thinks, but I played a right decent number of games this year and wrote up a summary of what I thought were my games of the year. The catch is that I'm playing games not just for the PS2, but also for platforms that are no longer supported and games that have been out for years, but are new to me. So my games of the year included GTA3 and Vice City, but also Monster Rancher 2 for the PSX and Donkey Kong for the GameBoy and Necronomicon Pinball (import) for the Saturn.

I'd love to hear from gamers that keep similar websites about their gaming habits.

Not that anyone gives a rip what a schmoe thinks, but I played a right decent number of games this year and wrote up a summary of what I thought were my games of the year. The catch is that I'm playing games not just for the PS2, but also for platforms that are no longer supported and games that have been out for years, but are new to me. So my games of the year included GTA3 and Vice City, but also Monster Rancher 2 for the PSX and Donkey Kong for the GameBoy and Necronomicon Pinball (import) for the Saturn.

I'd love to hear from gamers that keep similar websites about their gaming habits.

Not that anyone gives a rip what a schmoe thinks, but I played a right decent number of games this year and wrote up a summary of what I thought were my games of the year. The catch is that I'm playing games not just for the PS2, but also for platforms that are no longer supported and games that have been out for years, but are new to me. So my games of the year included GTA3 and Vice City, but also Monster Rancher 2 for the PSX and Donkey Kong for the GameBoy and Necronomicon Pinball (import) for the Saturn.

I'd love to hear from gamers that keep similar websites about their gaming habits.

LGP is quite a promising group of people. They're working alongside Tuxgames to sell their software. If you support Linux, you should purchase all your software from Tuxgames. As for Happypenguin, this news is 24 hours old and Linuxgames.com posted an article before they did :-) . Happypenguin.org covers more home-brew games than Linuxgames.com, but when it comes to commercial games they both offer competitivly insightful forums. For the greatest source of gaming news in europe, HOLARSE is the place to go (PS: use babelfish).

In fact, just now, Linuxgames.com has an article about how LGP is taking over the porting effort of Mindrover: Eruopa Project. And one last thought, Linuxgames.com doesn't censor their forums, unlike Happypenguin.org

LGP is quite a promising group of people. They're working alongside Tuxgames to sell their software. If you support Linux, you should purchase all your software from Tuxgames. As for Happypenguin, this news is 24 hours old and Linuxgames.com posted an article before they did :-) . Happypenguin.org covers more home-brew games than Linuxgames.com, but when it comes to commercial games they both offer competitivly insightful forums. For the greatest source of gaming news in europe, HOLARSE is the place to go (PS: use babelfish).

In fact, just now, Linuxgames.com has an article about how LGP is taking over the porting effort of Mindrover: Eruopa Project. And one last thought, Linuxgames.com doesn't censor their forums, unlike Happypenguin.org

LGP is quite a promising group of people. They're working alongside Tuxgames to sell their software. If you support Linux, you should purchase all your software from Tuxgames. As for Happypenguin, this news is 24 hours old and Linuxgames.com posted an article before they did :-) . Happypenguin.org covers more home-brew games than Linuxgames.com, but when it comes to commercial games they both offer competitivly insightful forums. For the greatest source of gaming news in europe, HOLARSE is the place to go (PS: use babelfish).

In fact, just now, Linuxgames.com has an article about how LGP is taking over the porting effort of Mindrover: Eruopa Project. And one last thought, Linuxgames.com doesn't censor their forums, unlike Happypenguin.org

LGP is quite a promising group of people. They're working alongside Tuxgames to sell their software. If you support Linux, you should purchase all your software from Tuxgames. As for Happypenguin, this news is 24 hours old and Linuxgames.com posted an article before they did :-) . Happypenguin.org covers more home-brew games than Linuxgames.com, but when it comes to commercial games they both offer competitivly insightful forums. For the greatest source of gaming news in europe, HOLARSE is the place to go (PS: use babelfish).

In fact, just now, Linuxgames.com has an article about how LGP is taking over the porting effort of Mindrover: Eruopa Project. And one last thought, Linuxgames.com doesn't censor their forums, unlike Happypenguin.org

I think that work has to begin on either porting massively popular games

Off course all of us linux users would love to have every big name game available in a native linux port, but Linuxgamepublishing (LGP) has not choice but to contiue down this path.

First off, game companies don't want to pay to have their games ported to Linux. LGP must pay the game company to port their game and also pay royalties on each copy to them as well in the same manner that Loki did (minus the corruption).

I asked Mike Simms about this a few weeks ago, and he brought up that new AAA titles are very expensive to port, so for LGP to be profitable they are mostly porting lesser known titles.

It would be great if he could work with game companies as a consultant to port games, but the very small nubmer of companies that are willing to pay for this service are being served by icculus.org.
Mike is a really nice guy and has no interest in competing with icculus for porting contracts.

In other gaming news, I just read over at Linuxgames that there is now a Linux version public beta of Serious Sam the First Encounter. It will even install the game from the cd for you. I tried it, and it runs with no hitches on my AthlonXP 1800+ with a GeForce 4 Ti 4200.

ScummVM: A reimplementation of the SCUMM-engine used by most classic Lucasarts-adventures like Monkey Island, Sam'n'Max, Day of the Tentacle, Loom etc... Works amazingly good! I finished Sam'n'Max (in Linux) just yesterday and it had no glitches at all! It also supports Simon the Sorcerer 1 and (soon) 2.

Sarien: A reimplementation of the AGI-engine used by the first-generation Sierra-games like Space Quest 1+2, Kings Quest 1-3, Leisure Suit Larry 1 etc..

FreeSCI: A reimplementation of the SCI-engine used by most second-generation Sierra-games like Space Quest 3, Kings Quest 4, Leisure Suit Larry 2+3 etc...

amd told about testing ut2k3 with their 64 bit cpu and nv30 gpu -> geforce fx
www.linuxgames.com

UT 2003!
Linux Games!!
Tux Games!
Neverwinter Nights!
In your face you greasy little "Linux doesn't have any games" troll!

Friends and I have been complaining about GameSpot's reviews recently (see here) but they still cover a lot of video game news and provide a lot of reading that at least has some facts in it, and occasionally good opinions. As a content provider, their value to me is in older stuff. I like going back and reading old reviews of games that are now on the used games bargain rack. To get to that stuff, however, you have to have a subscription. That's what I think is the interesting idea in GameSpot's model: you can have everything (mostly) that we publish for free as long as you come often to the site and read it within a week or two of the publish date. To read older stuff, you have to pony up. Thus, people who just want free news suffer the banner ads and GameSpot makes money. The people who want more (myself included) will pony up and as a bonus not ever worry about banner ads or being locked out of something.

During E3, their bandwidth was excellent. I got some huge movies during peak hours as fast as my netpipe could pull it. The reviews go back to the Saturn days, which fits my interests just fine. I do wish they had more GameBoy reviews and more detail in the older reviews in general.

Running a tiny little gaming site with a friend in my spare time, I can see why having a catalog of old content is valuable...I just have to look at the Google searches that lead people to my site. People stop in to see all kinds of stuff on my site, from months ago to yesterday. (Whether it's worth their visit, I have no idea. ;^D) This is precisely the observation on which I think GameSpot is betting their farm: people who want an extensive library of content will pay for it, even if the content is dated somewhat.

Friends and I have been complaining about GameSpot's reviews recently (see here) but they still cover a lot of video game news and provide a lot of reading that at least has some facts in it, and occasionally good opinions. As a content provider, their value to me is in older stuff. I like going back and reading old reviews of games that are now on the used games bargain rack. To get to that stuff, however, you have to have a subscription. That's what I think is the interesting idea in GameSpot's model: you can have everything (mostly) that we publish for free as long as you come often to the site and read it within a week or two of the publish date. To read older stuff, you have to pony up. Thus, people who just want free news suffer the banner ads and GameSpot makes money. The people who want more (myself included) will pony up and as a bonus not ever worry about banner ads or being locked out of something.

During E3, their bandwidth was excellent. I got some huge movies during peak hours as fast as my netpipe could pull it. The reviews go back to the Saturn days, which fits my interests just fine. I do wish they had more GameBoy reviews and more detail in the older reviews in general.

Running a tiny little gaming site with a friend in my spare time, I can see why having a catalog of old content is valuable...I just have to look at the Google searches that lead people to my site. People stop in to see all kinds of stuff on my site, from months ago to yesterday. (Whether it's worth their visit, I have no idea. ;^D) This is precisely the observation on which I think GameSpot is betting their farm: people who want an extensive library of content will pay for it, even if the content is dated somewhat.

Maybe you were just listing the games that you play regularly, and you already know this; but Unreal 2k3 has Linux support in the box on CD3 and (hopefully) Neverwinter Nights should have a Linux client that you can download here within the next few weeks.

As a Public Service Announcement(tm) to anyone who's into gaming and Linux, or is considering installing Linux, you should peruse Linux Games and The Linux Game Tome every once and a while. Maybe if people are more aware that commercial games are ported to Linux we can have fewer people trying to run Quake III in WINE (Ugh!).

-Colin

Maybe you were just listing the games that you play regularly, and you already know this; but Unreal 2k3 has Linux support in the box on CD3 and (hopefully) Neverwinter Nights should have a Linux client that you can download here within the next few weeks.

As a Public Service Announcement(tm) to anyone who's into gaming and Linux, or is considering installing Linux, you should peruse Linux Games and The Linux Game Tome every once and a while. Maybe if people are more aware that commercial games are ported to Linux we can have fewer people trying to run Quake III in WINE (Ugh!).

-Colin

While I think you're largely right, the OS/2 to Linux link is where we part ways. The following was posted on the the Linuxgames web site. The poster was responding to others who were advocating removing the choice for everyone of running Windows programs under Linux;

1. First off: OS/2's Windows layer wasn't emulation any more then Wine is. They are libraries and runtime environments. (~insert Wine FAQ entry here~)

   OS/2's runtime environment for Windows apps was good -- for Windows 2.x and 3.x programs. It was good because it was based on Microsoft's own source code for Windows 3.x.

   Because of that, you are right, there was no reason *when Windows 3.1 applications were most popular* for writing OS/2 specific applications even though the APIs were similar.

   As soon as those new-fangled Win32 programs (everything shipping now), the support fell appart. IBM required Microsoft's good graces. Since it was Microsoft's code, IBM didn't have control.

   The reason why it is a meaningless comparison; Wine _isn't_ under Microsoft's control. On the down side, every piece of compatability that the Wine (or WineX) is hard fought. That's why Wine is never claimed to be a drop-in version of Windows. The emphasis for Wine is on getting specific programs running. When the API changes, Wine can adapt (though slowly) since it doesn't care about the OS only the application layer.

That thread has some other gems, though sadly it looks like the trolls have reduced the s/n ratio to a point that Wine can't be discussed at all.

I still haven't picked up Vice City

Yes.:
"I have been told by Epic that they are "working closely" with ATI to resolve issues with their Linux drivers. Presumably, an updated version of their drivers will eventually be available which will enable the playing of UT2k3 using a Radeon 8500. With the release of drivers from ATI and Xi Graphics, Radeon 8500 Linux users will have two ways of getting the 3D support required to play UT2k3. "

Here. ATI and PowerVR will all have S3TC enabled, UT2003-playing drivers soonish, I believe. NVIDIA and XiG already do. No word on Matrox, using any drivers. And no final word on DRI.

It's my impression that user bitching didn't have much to do with it. Epic has one person, Daniel Vogel, that is interested in seeing some Linux support and he contacted a notable Linux game coder, Ryan Gordon, about getting the client work done on Linux. My experience has been that Epic isn't nearly so pro-free-software as say Carmack but they do have a view of the world that isn't completely Windows-centric. Mostly Windows-centric? Of course...that's where a good portion of their profit sits, along with console ports, like the Xbox Unreal game slated for this winter and Unreal Tournament for PS2 at the launch of that console. But the recent comment by Mark Rein of Epic saying, in effect, "if we have a server port, we should also do a client port" is probably indicative of the positive attitude that Epic currently has about ports for other systems. And they haven't forgotten the Mac, and a port will be coming along for that platform as well. Epic wants everyone to buy the game and they've taken steps to make sure that every major platform has a port for people to buy.

The community helping out and being supportive is probably more likely to get things to happen, rather than bitching.

You can read a little more about how the UT2003 client came to be at LinuxGames.

The DRI project writes open source drivers. They do not incorporate any binary bits that I'm aware of. They provide (alpha) drivers for the Radeon 8500 and those drivers are open source. They provide binary-snapshots of the relevant driver bits that you can drop onto your machine for use with an existing XFree86 4.2 installation and appropriate kernel. These drivers do not include S3TC/DXTC and thus cannot play UT2003. This situation may change in the future. If this situation changes, then supposedly other cards like the Matrox G400 and ATI Radeon and possibly the 3dfx Voodoo3+ cards will be able to run UT2003.

ATI has written their own binary-only drivers for the Radeon 8500 cards. These appear to be a branch of the binary-only drivers they provide for their FireGL cards, since the hardware is related. I do not believe (but also do not know) whether these drivers are based on DRI or not. They could be, since the license allows such a thing to be made. As of this writing, these drivers do not include S3TC/DXTC and thus cannot play UT2003. ATI and Epic are supposedly working together to remedy this situation and I am told that new, compatible, binary-only drivers will eventually be made available.

Xi Graphics also provides drivers for many cards. Their updated drivers are compatible with UT2003, which makes the Radeon 8500 playable under Linux. A demo of these drivers is available (although it is limited to short periods of use after which time the X server must be restarted) for free and for the full server you must pay a fee.

PowerVR has their own binary-only driver based on the DRI project available for their Kyro and Kyro 2 cards. As of this writing, these drivers do not include S3TC/DXTC and thus cannot play UT2003. PowerVR and Epic are supposedly working together to remedy this situation and I know that updated, compatible, binary-only drivers will eventually be made available.

NVIDIA provides their own drivers and they run UT2003 just fine. They are, as is well-known, binary only.

Hope that clears this all up. Most of this can be gleaned from this article on LinuxGames about UT2003.

LiveCDs have always been a great way to sway potential Linux-converts, but this should really impress them!

If this were a Linux-only game that supported a wide range of hardware configurations and showed off graphical splendor that wasn't generally available on Windows, then that'd be impressive to lots of people. As much as my geeky side can be impressed by the idea of putting together a CD like this, I just don't see Windows people giving a hoot.

FWIW, I'm not a Windows user. I only use Linux at work and at home. Heck, I even wrote an article on the Linux demo and how it came to be. But most Windows users are still puzzled about why a Linux port even exists. They're certainly not going to want you rebooting their machine just so you can boot up Linux and play it from a CD.

The games that pushed Jaguar hardest was either Doom or Iron Soldier 2. Both of these took the machine to its limit. The Doom port took a lot of personal involvement from John Carmack. The best game is of course Tempest 2000.

The games that pushed Jaguar hardest was either Doom or Iron Soldier 2. Both of these took the machine to its limit. The Doom port took a lot of personal involvement from John Carmack. The best game is of course Tempest 2000.

(I only skimmed through part of it, but it looks like if you have an ATI card, you may not have much luck with UT2K3.)

-B

Linux demo _has_ been released.

linuxgames

as is written on linuxgames, mirrors are here:
mirror 1
mirror 2
mirror 3
mirror 4
mirror 5

Oh, so iD won't be releasing it for Linux? Interesting...

The article and discussion on the Linux Games site can be found here.

I only noticed it because I have Linux Games as a slashbox on the front page of slashdot...

I found the following games work very well:

o Half-Life (Single Player)
o Warcraft II BNE
o Fallout / Fallout2
o Unreal Gold (some hacking required)
o SimEarth
o Hexen II

Installing is often a problem. Sometimes you need to boot to windows, intstall, then copy the whole tree over to linux. Often it is useful to start X in 640x480 mode as well.

My experiences are with vanilla CVS Wine. TransGaming won't accept my debit card, so I haven't subscribed (would like to though).

If only Serious Sam I and II would get supported, my life would be complete! Or maybe
icculus will finish his port someday.

Also, you can now play Hexen II using Anvil of Thyrion which is a native linux client.

I've expressed my frustration with WineX before, and every time I see a headline like this, I feel compelled to speak up.

The people that defend (or, as it more often the case, blindly promote) WineX tend to think that games of any kind, even through Wine, will inevitably help Linux. "Now Windows users can switch!" they chant. Yet, what self-respecting Windows gamer would really leave the relative comfort of Windows (2k|XP) where all of their hardware and games work great just to move to Linux, a system rife with hardware incompatibilities and filled with unfamiliar elements at every turn? There is no unhappy faction of Windows users that chafes so much under the Microsoft yoke that they'll give up everything they have already for freedom (in the sense of GNU). It just isn't going to happen. (Note: WineX itself isn't even completely free, so that's not a very good example of freedom, is it?)

So where does WineX sell? To people who are already Linux users. The people who are already using Linux can use WineX, but then they run a serious risk of killing any chance for a native port. Remember, game companies need a whole lot more than karma and a good warm feeling inside to port a game to your system. They need, in particular, cash. Lots and lots of cash. And they'll most likely take any excuse that sounds resonable to ignore a platform that has marginal (if not improbable) profit potential, like Linux. "Oh, it works under Wine. Go play that, Linux users." Reminds me a bit of a former instructor's description of the selection process for a really good position: They're not looking for reasons to take anyone...they're looking for reasons to eliminate them. And Linux hasn't made good money for anyone yet.

You'll never make your platform legit like that. It didn't work of OS/2. It didn't work for Bleemcast. It hasn't worked for VirtualPC on MacOS. Not once has this kind of compatibility meant more native apps for that platform that tries to leech off its more successful neighbor.

Yes, Loki died. They died for a whole lot of reasons, one of which was that there was no real money in the Linux gaming market. But they at least brought a lot of damn good tools to the community and left them for all to use after they died. Where is Wine getting us? Half-working compatibility with a nigh eight year old system that is probably going to change dramatically (if not completely) in the next revision of Windows.

Welcome to Square One, people.

Sorry for the disjointed ramble.

let's just hope old John hasn't forgotten about us Linux gamers.

All 8 of you? And don't worry, I'm quite sure that he hasn't forgotten the piss poor sales of Linux games. The guy probably couldn't forget about it if he wanted to.

Interesting point, but I really doubt that this is aimed at the general consumer. It's for Joe Linux, who prides himself on doing nifty tech things with Linux.

Okay, Tux Racer may not be the most amazing thing in the world, but it's fun for a couple hours.

Freeciv...why is freeciv bad? You don't like civilization? There are some differences, but aside from the fact that civ had more artists (and, IMHO, a worse interface) and is a bit easier to use, not huge difference in fun factor.

Lets consider some others:

zangband/ToME/angband/nethack/etc: These *are* a lot of fun. Diablo has much more simplistic, boring gameplay, and it took off all over. Most variants have a pretty simple text or 2d graphics based interface without music, but some are a bit more elaborate. Be a bit of a pain to play on the controller, yes...

Chromium BSU: flashy scrolling shooter. Could use the 3d hardware in the X-box.

Dunno if you can just use ordinary ol' x86 binaries (particularly considering RAM usage), but:

Quake 3 (use the 3d hardware). Not free.

Abuse: This was a *blast* when it came out -- I played it over and over. It's looking a little dated now, but it's still a good game. Free now -- thanks crack.com.

Pingus is apparently shaping up pretty well.

There's part of the amazing Exile series available for Linux. (shareware)

Maelstrom may be too "simple" for you, as it's only an astroids clone, but it was a very well known game on the Mac for a long time, and I still like it.

While I'm not a tremendous fan of Illwinter's Conquest of Elysium II, their Dominions: Priests, Prophets, and Pretenders is a non-flashy but very deep, very good strategy game. Shareware.

There's a DOS-style shooter from Mountain King Studios, Raptor. (shareware)

Finally, there are all the emulators and whatnot...take a look at GNUboy, TuxNES, snes9x, DGen/SDL,
FreeSCI, Sarien, Exult, XU4, ScummVM, Basilisk II, YAE and others.

There are a host of Loki ports that you can't get any more except used. Lots of good stuff from LGames, though I'm not as big a fan of their stuff as some other people are.

Finally, text-based but really, really sophisticated, good, and almost all of them free, there are text-based interactive fiction (Try Tower of Babel before giving up on this...first one I ever beat without cheating, and it's *soooooo* good). The Interactive Fiction Archive has games and players.

Finally, many good games can be played through WINE -- Starcraft, Fallout, Max Payne, Half Life...

These are just some of the games that I enjoy under Linux. There are lots more (admittedly, some of lower quality) available at the SDL Games Page and the Linux Games Tome.

Linux games usually take a bit more (okay, often a lot :-) ) more effort to set up properly. But they're often very customizable, you can actually have an impact on the game design ("This game needs feature X"), and you don't have to leave the comfortable environs of Linux. And the environment is getting better, not worse.

I know the folks at LinuxGames.com call me 'prolific' every time they mention my name, since I churn out so many titles...

But this OSNews article (I'm mentioned at the top, before the actual interview with Michael) was a surprise! Cool!

And don't worry, I'm keeping it up, despite worrying about my job and my wedding this October. :^)

A "legalize marijuana" badge might be inappropriate on, say LinuxGames or Happy Penguin. But this is Michael's personal development page. He wrote all the games, he wrote the website. If he wants to lobby for something totally unrelated, that's his prerogative. Deal.

Too late in life I rediscovered pinball.

As a kid, I used to accompany my granddad or my mom to the store to get groceries and occasionally I'd get a dime (that's right, 10) to play a pinball game that sat near the front, near the magazine rack. That machine had a mechanical scoreboard, unlike the LED boards I saw later in life. I recall being absorbed by the lights and the idea of trying to keep the ball in play with those little bumpers (hey, I was easily amused). After a while my mom stopped going to that store and pinball just about left my life for good.

Flash forward 20+ years and a fellow grad student, Joerg, started going to get pizza at a little college-quality Italian place over by the campus. The great arcade next door had closed, mostly, but some of the games had stayed to soak up quarters from the pizza eating patrons. As it turns out Joerg was a real fan of pinball and he enticed me into playing and I got hooked. It was really cool to finally be a bit coordinated and to have the cash to spend to actually get to know a machine. In this case, it was The Addams Family, with little audio clips from the movie. ("The Mamushka!" was my favorite.) Although I never measured up to Joerg's mastery of the game, I found truly irresistible the tactile feedback and use of real, honest-to-physics english that goes into working the table. Sure, feeling the kickback of the gun in Time Crisis is cool, but not like pinball.

Now, that Italian place is gone and the games are gone for good. While I still plan to get a Robotron machine first, I'm thinking of adding a pinball machine to my computer and work room when we finally get time to get a real home. They really are awesome.

If you haven't ever played a pinball machine and you get the chance, just remember that those quarters are pretty well-spent, even if just to say that you played pinball for a bit. I bet you'll find you enjoy it, to boot. :^)

How about buing some old games on eBay? At least Sierra has some collections. And then installing some really cool opensource interpreters, line ScummVM, Sarien, FreeSCI. The downside is, that some have become collectible and people are willing to spend nearly $200 on Space Quest Collection. But such is a price for greatness. --Harri

Old Sierra On-Line games (Larry, etc) were written in a bytecode language and interpreters for many platforms, incuding Mac, were available. Sarien and FreeSCI are free interpreters and can play most of those classic games. Sarien has been ported to MacOS classic and OSX.

I know this was a troll, but there is a driver for raedon cards.

Sure it is not specific to the latest card in this slashdot article, but I'm sure the drivers will be made to work with the new Raedon soon enough.

Nah. Use xqf :-)

do all your gaming in Linux, that's what I do. most games have pretty good in game browsers, plus there are other options such as Xqf that do all gamespy does, save for the viruses. plus, no registration required!

P

What would happen to the gaming world at large if Sony was to start developing games for Linux?

If I had to guess, nothing major would happen except there'd be a few more games for Linux and there'd be a lot of articles about it on Linux Games.

Would developers support Sony?

Probably, but it depends on what you mean by developers. Hardware (read as video and sound card) developers may try and throw Linux gamers a bone in the driver arena (but it'll be a small, closed source one). Since nvidia already does this and most (if not all) Linux gamers opt for their cards because of it, impact would be minimal. Software developers could care less about what Sony does in the software market. It would probably go down as follows:
1.) Sony develops games for Linux.
2.) Other developers develop games for Linux thinking that Sony had some special information.
3.) Sales aren't immediately stellar, other developers back out and snicker behind Sony's back thinking that they're superior.

Would Linux gaming become a very viable option?

IMHO, and don't take this as a flame because I'm a supporter and user of Linux, but I don't think it'll be really great until a brand new/standarized API (a la direct X - so shoot me) is developed (or a current one is seriously overhauled). There's something to be said in an all-in-one multimedia package that doesn't depend on a bunch of other things. Or until there's a working alternative to X which will never happen. *shrug* I'm probably wrong, but that's just my 2 cents.

http://www.linuxgames.com/news/index.php3/5653

ltsp.org
k12 ltsp

the k12 set up has a really easy install, complete with redhat 7.2

check out qvwm (windows style window manager) and codeweavers (Realplayer, Quicktime, etc. plugins for linux browsers)

It may be hard to get all the windows games you want but there are some that ive seen work. Go to linuxGames.com for info on setting up games with linux. I know they have a tutorial for getting Starvraft working with wine.

half-life (including CS) has worked for linux for 1.5+ yrs

lhl.linuxgames.com

1 bug with current cvs builds is that sound doesn't work, you can either get an old copy of winex (check the forum for the site above, they have old working copies) or edit your config.cfg and disable voice.

Also, even if the above worked perfectly, there is no way to transmit voice from linux, only listen.

[19:35] DE/Epic: Will UT2003 make it to Linux? If so, server, client or both?

[19:35] Server for sure on Linux

[19:36] MarkRein[Epic]: any word on a client

[19:36] Irix--> Don't know yet about a client but it will probably happen eventually

[19:37] Irix--> We'd definitely like to see it and I know Dan Vogel is talking with some friends of his who would like to do it.

I recently bought a second copy of Tribes II from Tux Games (which seems to load somewhat slowly right now). I think there are a few other places, too, but I'm not able to find them right now.

There are several good linux gaming sites, such as linuxgames and icculus.org. icclus.org has a nice faq and lots of projects, and linuxgames is a cornucopia of helpful info for gaming on linux.

-Paul Komarek