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Suggestion: Install some of the demos or free games available (I can recommend Peggle Extreme casual or the Sam&Max point and click adventure), and test out if the steam offline mode works for you. It has improved a lot recently, but some still reports problems, therefore the suggestion to try it for yourself.

It's $100 for a dev license for the iPhone.

If you want to make money at it, develop the game and sell it yourself. If you can't recoup $100, you'll at least learn a lot in the process.

-Dan

Your assuming they also have a Mac since one is needed to program for the iPhone. A better option would be to use Steam since it's free (if I remember right they charge a percentage of the sales, but no other fee's) and can be for both WIndows or Mac.

That's changing too, hopefully. I was surprised to see that the new Steam UI runs all of its web pages on WebKit. Although the move makes sense since they want to port Steam to OSX and Linux (WebKit being compatible with all three platforms while IE obviously isn't), this is still a very good development. The fewer things use IE's rendering engine, the better.

CS 1.6 still has a lot of players indeed. Though your point still stands, CS:S has more now:

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

I bought counter strike back in 1998, but I still pull it out and play it from time to time. Hell, it's Valve's most popular game to date*, even today. To top that off, Valve upgraded me to the Valve Platinum Pack for using the HL CD key that came with the copy of HL I bought just for Counter-Strike. The only thing Microsoft supports beyond the scheduled lifespan of the product is old Windows and Office updates as near as I can tell, never games.

Valve doesn't run game servers (okay, they run a few, but it's not many). Game servers are paid for by the players. All Valve needs to do to keep Counter-Strike running is keep the master browser servers in operation, which I believe are exactly the same system between ALL Valve and Source games... so as long as Valve decides to support the browser for one of their games, the browser will remain running for all of their games (as well as third-party Source mods). It is costing Microsoft, however, insane amounts of money to keep the XBOX Live servers going for the original Halo while they are making a pittance along the lines of income from it, and they just don't want to support it anymore. You specifically stated that Counter-Strike is still Valve's most popular game, which is basically lending support for Microsoft in this debate, because Halo is not popular anymore. Who still plays the original Halo? Nobody that I know.

(Before you accuse me of being a Microsoft fanboy, know that I love Valve and I hate consoles in general. I'm writing this because your logic is flawed.)

More than likely the Halo 2 servers are running on a PC, be it virtualized or other. Microsoft is completely rewriting the Halo codebase from the ground up for Halo 4 or whatever it is they're calling it. Considering most people bought the game for the multiplayer releasing the source code for the servers is a small concession to make. Usually I could care less, but unless MS offers Halo 2 on the 360 live arcade for free to existing owners, Microsoft is kind of screwing over their customer base.
 
I bought counter strike back in 1998, but I still pull it out and play it from time to time. Hell, it's Valve's most popular game to date*, even today. To top that off, Valve upgraded me to the Valve Platinum Pack for using the HL CD key that came with the copy of HL I bought just for Counter-Strike. The only thing Microsoft supports beyond the scheduled lifespan of the product is old Windows and Office updates as near as I can tell, never games.
 
Valve actively supports their games and player base, Microsoft turns their back on them. Which one do you want to support?
 
-
 
*Actually right now it's COD4, but that's because they just had a $15 steam sale on it.

For some games randomly generated levels work, but for a lot of games it just means un-inspired bland levels most of the time.

It might work for some games like Mario; but even in the relatively simple genre of 2D scrollers there are some examples of where it wouldn't work, take Braid for example.

I'm not so sure I agree with you. I usually don't agree with people who oversell AI but I'm going to have to claim that Braid could be coded to generate levels -- albeit a bland start you could start to think of the kinds of interleaved time relative solutions necessary on each level and mimic them in your procedural content generation to vary them and even combine them randomly.

Difficult? Yes. Impossible? I don't think so.

IEEE is smart for picking this as an AI competition. All other famous AI (like beating The Turing Test or video analysis) is so very hard and computationally expensive. A competition involving them would be nothing more than babies crawling. So why not do something more hands on and pragmatic?

If you can stomach ads, here's a decent list of games that use procedurally derived content. Check out Eufloria where the music, art and levels are all procedurally generated. I think that has a free demo on Steam. While the PCG wiki isn't the greatest, it's a good starting point if you want to get into this IEEE thing.

Further proof that no one cares: Steam's Hardware Survey March 2010. Most prevalent resolution amongst gamers? 1280x1024, at 19%. Second place is 1680x1050, at 18%. Neither of those are particularly high, with the highest resolution in the survey being 1920x1200 at 6% and "Other" is only 3.4%.

His point, and I have to agree with it, is that I had 1280x1024 in 1995 and 1600x1200 a few years later. And incidentally the displays were brighter and had a larger color gamet.

Besides when his eyes go in a few years he won't care about the high resolutions anymore.

Because he is staring at low resolution screens! For the sake of your eyes, get a high resolution display!

Further proof that no one cares: Steam's Hardware Survey March 2010. Most prevalent resolution amongst gamers? 1280x1024, at 19%. Second place is 1680x1050, at 18%. Neither of those are particularly high, with the highest resolution in the survey being 1920x1200 at 6% and "Other" is only 3.4%.

Since when were gamers ever a good measure of display resolution? Gamers have *never* pushed their hardware up to really high resolutions because high frame rates are more important to them (which makes a lot of sense - you can't appreciate high resolutions on fast moving video anyway).

The people you should be paying attention to are graphic designers, programmers, people using CAD, publishers, etc. These are the people who were using 21" 1600x1200 CRTs when "normal people" were happy with their 15" 800x600 displays and gamers were trying to squeeze high frame rates out of 320x240.

"He's not a "normal consumer" so he has different concerns. He's lobbying them as best he can and if you don't share them, maybe you should STFU about him being a whiner?"

Did you bother to read his reason why he wants a ridiculous 300dpi display? "I don't want the super high DPI to fit more info, I want super high DPI so I can get extra smooth text and screen elements. "

Did he seriously just say he wanted a 6000x4000 24" LCD with a 0.08mm dot pitch (compared to average CRTs with 0.22-0.28mm) so he could look at smooth text?

Also, does he realize this is all his employers' (Microsoft) fault? XP was set by default to 96 DPI. Sure you could set it to "large size" 120 DPI when running high, but that usually ended up distorting everything. Websites didn't look right, text would be all over the pages, some text would be larger but other things wouldn't be, like text in Flash or on images. What looked normal on your screen looked huge on other's meaning you couldn't do web design any word processing. So why would manufactures offer 300dpi when customers would just set them back to the 96 DPI they're use to?

Further proof that no one cares: Steam's Hardware Survey March 2010. Most prevalent resolution amongst gamers? 1280x1024, at 19%. Second place is 1680x1050, at 18%. Neither of those are particularly high, with the highest resolution in the survey being 1920x1200 at 6% and "Other" is only 3.4%.

Besides when his eyes go in a few years he won't care about the high resolutions anymore.

Quick follow-up:

kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/public_all.zip.42037f1079151a7bfb225ef0ac9bd5b3b3840ce9
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/skins_all.zip.6a58428db616736d79a3374ba75abd29e2c1276f
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/bins_linux.zip.dc36f31374267ad4a740762a6cf1925ed30bcab9
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_linux.zip.52367793a26b83abc84871770277e1b8d77608bc
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ for ZIP in *; do unzip $ZIP; done
chmod 755 steam.sh linux32/*

kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ ./steam.sh
[ 0%] !!! Fatal Error: Failed to determine download location for universe 0
[----] Verifying installation...
[ 0%] Downloading Update...
[ 0%] !!! Fatal Error: Failed to determine download location for universe 0
unlinked 1 orphaned pipes
removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 9209 with name 0emSteamEngineInstance
removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 9209 with name 0eSteamEngineLock
CellID: Fetching server list from CSDS. . .
CellID: CSDS returned 169 servers.
CellID: Connecting to 193.34.51.2:27031. . .

Unable to open displayCAsyncIOManager: 0 threads terminating. 0 reads, 0 writes, 0 deferrals.
CAsyncIOManager: 3750 single object sleeps, 0 multi object sleeps
CAsyncIOManager: 0 single object alertable sleeps, 11 multi object alertable sleeps
pure virtual method called
terminate called without an active exception
Aborted

Quick follow-up:

kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/public_all.zip.42037f1079151a7bfb225ef0ac9bd5b3b3840ce9
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/skins_all.zip.6a58428db616736d79a3374ba75abd29e2c1276f
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/bins_linux.zip.dc36f31374267ad4a740762a6cf1925ed30bcab9
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_linux.zip.52367793a26b83abc84871770277e1b8d77608bc
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ for ZIP in *; do unzip $ZIP; done
chmod 755 steam.sh linux32/*

kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ ./steam.sh
[ 0%] !!! Fatal Error: Failed to determine download location for universe 0
[----] Verifying installation...
[ 0%] Downloading Update...
[ 0%] !!! Fatal Error: Failed to determine download location for universe 0
unlinked 1 orphaned pipes
removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 9209 with name 0emSteamEngineInstance
removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 9209 with name 0eSteamEngineLock
CellID: Fetching server list from CSDS. . .
CellID: CSDS returned 169 servers.
CellID: Connecting to 193.34.51.2:27031. . .

Unable to open displayCAsyncIOManager: 0 threads terminating. 0 reads, 0 writes, 0 deferrals.
CAsyncIOManager: 3750 single object sleeps, 0 multi object sleeps
CAsyncIOManager: 0 single object alertable sleeps, 11 multi object alertable sleeps
pure virtual method called
terminate called without an active exception
Aborted

Quick follow-up:

kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/public_all.zip.42037f1079151a7bfb225ef0ac9bd5b3b3840ce9
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/skins_all.zip.6a58428db616736d79a3374ba75abd29e2c1276f
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/bins_linux.zip.dc36f31374267ad4a740762a6cf1925ed30bcab9
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_linux.zip.52367793a26b83abc84871770277e1b8d77608bc
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ for ZIP in *; do unzip $ZIP; done
chmod 755 steam.sh linux32/*

kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ ./steam.sh
[ 0%] !!! Fatal Error: Failed to determine download location for universe 0
[----] Verifying installation...
[ 0%] Downloading Update...
[ 0%] !!! Fatal Error: Failed to determine download location for universe 0
unlinked 1 orphaned pipes
removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 9209 with name 0emSteamEngineInstance
removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 9209 with name 0eSteamEngineLock
CellID: Fetching server list from CSDS. . .
CellID: CSDS returned 169 servers.
CellID: Connecting to 193.34.51.2:27031. . .

Unable to open displayCAsyncIOManager: 0 threads terminating. 0 reads, 0 writes, 0 deferrals.
CAsyncIOManager: 3750 single object sleeps, 0 multi object sleeps
CAsyncIOManager: 0 single object alertable sleeps, 11 multi object alertable sleeps
pure virtual method called
terminate called without an active exception
Aborted

Quick follow-up:

kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/public_all.zip.42037f1079151a7bfb225ef0ac9bd5b3b3840ce9
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/skins_all.zip.6a58428db616736d79a3374ba75abd29e2c1276f
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/bins_linux.zip.dc36f31374267ad4a740762a6cf1925ed30bcab9
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ wget http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_linux.zip.52367793a26b83abc84871770277e1b8d77608bc
kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ for ZIP in *; do unzip $ZIP; done
chmod 755 steam.sh linux32/*

kathrin@KathysLinuxLaptop:/tmp/steam$ ./steam.sh
[ 0%] !!! Fatal Error: Failed to determine download location for universe 0
[----] Verifying installation...
[ 0%] Downloading Update...
[ 0%] !!! Fatal Error: Failed to determine download location for universe 0
unlinked 1 orphaned pipes
removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 9209 with name 0emSteamEngineInstance
removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 9209 with name 0eSteamEngineLock
CellID: Fetching server list from CSDS. . .
CellID: CSDS returned 169 servers.
CellID: Connecting to 193.34.51.2:27031. . .

Unable to open displayCAsyncIOManager: 0 threads terminating. 0 reads, 0 writes, 0 deferrals.
CAsyncIOManager: 3750 single object sleeps, 0 multi object sleeps
CAsyncIOManager: 0 single object alertable sleeps, 11 multi object alertable sleeps
pure virtual method called
terminate called without an active exception
Aborted

It's more than simply "abandoned legacy cruft"

Checking the linux client version.

This references the following files:

public_all.zip, and
skins_all.zip.

and, of course:

Linux binaries, and
Linux client.

Looking at the linux client:

[root@XXX steam]# ldd linux32/steam
                linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
                librt.so.1 => /lib/librt.so.1 (0x00aa6000)
                libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00a3c000)
                libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00a36000)
                libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00a1d000)
                libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x008d7000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x008b9000)

It's more than simply "abandoned legacy cruft"

Checking the linux client version.

This references the following files:

public_all.zip, and
skins_all.zip.

and, of course:

Linux binaries, and
Linux client.

Looking at the linux client:

[root@XXX steam]# ldd linux32/steam
                linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
                librt.so.1 => /lib/librt.so.1 (0x00aa6000)
                libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00a3c000)
                libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00a36000)
                libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00a1d000)
                libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x008d7000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x008b9000)

It's more than simply "abandoned legacy cruft"

Checking the linux client version.

This references the following files:

public_all.zip, and
skins_all.zip.

and, of course:

Linux binaries, and
Linux client.

Looking at the linux client:

[root@XXX steam]# ldd linux32/steam
                linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
                librt.so.1 => /lib/librt.so.1 (0x00aa6000)
                libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00a3c000)
                libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00a36000)
                libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00a1d000)
                libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x008d7000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x008b9000)

It's more than simply "abandoned legacy cruft"

Checking the linux client version.

This references the following files:

public_all.zip, and
skins_all.zip.

and, of course:

Linux binaries, and
Linux client.

Looking at the linux client:

[root@XXX steam]# ldd linux32/steam
                linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
                librt.so.1 => /lib/librt.so.1 (0x00aa6000)
                libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00a3c000)
                libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00a36000)
                libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00a1d000)
                libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x008d7000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x008b9000)

It's more than simply "abandoned legacy cruft"

Checking the linux client version.

This references the following files:

public_all.zip, and
skins_all.zip.

and, of course:

Linux binaries, and
Linux client.

Looking at the linux client:

[root@XXX steam]# ldd linux32/steam
                linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
                librt.so.1 => /lib/librt.so.1 (0x00aa6000)
                libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00a3c000)
                libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00a36000)
                libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00a1d000)
                libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x008d7000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x008b9000)

Yeah, really limited. Only over 50% of the machines running Steam only run 32-bit operating systems:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Such a limit when you have literally 100's of $5 and old-archive games on there, some of them running on DOSBox... however will those games cope with only 4Gb of addressable RAM?!!?!

Not sure why Sony is taking the heat for it more than others. Maybe it's because the good guys like Valve wouldn't pull this crap on us!

http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

2.A. License Terms.

Steam and your Subscription(s) require the automatic download and installation of software and other content and updates onto your computer ("Steam Software"). You may not use Steam Software for any purpose other than the permitted access to Steam and your Subscriptions. You understand that for reasons that include, without limitation, system security, stability, and multiplayer interoperability, Steam may need to automatically update, pre-load, create new versions or otherwise enhance the Steam Software and accordingly, the system requirements to use the Steam Software may change over time. You understand that neither this Agreement nor the terms associated with a particular Subscription entitles you to future updates, new versions or other enhancements of the Steam Software associated with a particular Subscription although Valve may choose to provide such updates, etc. in its sole discretion.

Face it, all EULAs are designed so that the seller (ha, I mean licensor of course!) can screw you all they want. You just have to hope they don't do it.

http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_client_linux Probably helps the cause too. Phoronix has posted a new article: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODE3Mw

http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_client_linux?date=706605

Sorry for the redundancy.

http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_client_linux?date=706605

In college they will be using Macs, and people of their generation overwhelmingly use Macs, the skills will be more beneficial than learning Windows.

I would love to see something to support this. I was on a university campus this weekend and I was curious about this myself. I actually counted PC vs Mac as I walked around and at best Mac was 20%? While I won't argue that Mac is gaining ground I would say a blanket statement like this is not quite correct. I think learning and being comfortable with technology is more important than learning either the Windows / Mac / Linux way to do things.

Also many of the implied exclusive features are built into windows as well? Lastly, um Steam I shall quote from https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?p_faqid=98
"The Mac version of the Steam client will be released in April, until that time we will be unable to provide support for Mac issues.
For more information, please read the following news post:
Valve to Deliver Steam & Source on the Mac
Please note that not all Steam games will be available on the Mac client. Availability will be determined on a game-togame basis."
Right now Steam runs 0 of the games and who knows what the future holds there.

Instead you claim that 35% of gamers haven't purchase a new machine this year because... you don't think they have? I'm not sure about the average replacement time for gaming machines, but 3 years doesn't sound terribly far fetched.

If you don't understand the gravity of your error in assuming a 3 year upgrade cycle, you can take a look at their survey instead of talking out your ass. There is no way that they have such a cycle. You are claiming that they "upgrade" their machine by buying similar hardware. For instance, CPU's from the same manfacturer operating at the same frequency and with the same number of cores and with the same video cards.

No, sir. Steam users are not replacing their machines at the rate you imagine in this economy, but they ARE buying windows 7.

Instead you claim that 35% of gamers haven't purchase a new machine this year because... you don't think they have? I'm not sure about the average replacement time for gaming machines, but 3 years doesn't sound terribly far fetched.

If you don't understand the gravity of your error in assuming a 3 year upgrade cycle, you can take a look at their survey instead of talking out your ass. There is no way that they have such a cycle. You are claiming that they "upgrade" their machine by buying similar hardware. For instance, CPU's from the same manfacturer operating at the same frequency and with the same number of cores and with the same video cards.

No, sir. Steam users are not replacing their machines at the rate you imagine in this economy, but they ARE buying windows 7.

Instead you claim that 35% of gamers haven't purchase a new machine this year because... you don't think they have? I'm not sure about the average replacement time for gaming machines, but 3 years doesn't sound terribly far fetched.

If you don't understand the gravity of your error in assuming a 3 year upgrade cycle, you can take a look at their survey instead of talking out your ass. There is no way that they have such a cycle. You are claiming that they "upgrade" their machine by buying similar hardware. For instance, CPU's from the same manfacturer operating at the same frequency and with the same number of cores and with the same video cards.

No, sir. Steam users are not replacing their machines at the rate you imagine in this economy, but they ARE buying windows 7.

This is why services like Steam should offer an x-day money-back guarantee. Buy it. If you think it sucks, tell them. They can then remove the game from your account and you can "delete local game data," in exchange for a full refund.

Give users a "limit" to how often they can do it to the same game.

I'd love a feature like that. I've had kicked Lucidity off my account so fast. I'm not the only one who disliked that game.

Lesson learned: Don't buy a game based solely on the developer's reputation.

Apparently Steam finally fixed Offline Mode sometimes not working!

Looks like next month they're also fixing Offline Mode sometimes not working! :P

But in all seriousness... Steam has amazing prices and convenience. It's a great platform. It's also where most of the great indy titles end up. Some of the best older games also end up there (and on GOG) as do strange retro or creative games.

Some of my favourites:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/22000/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/18500/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/26800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/35700/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/41800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/3590/
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/1662/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/44200/

There's plenty more. I've bought around a hundred games now off Steam. Most were worth buying.

Apparently Steam finally fixed Offline Mode sometimes not working!

Looks like next month they're also fixing Offline Mode sometimes not working! :P

But in all seriousness... Steam has amazing prices and convenience. It's a great platform. It's also where most of the great indy titles end up. Some of the best older games also end up there (and on GOG) as do strange retro or creative games.

Some of my favourites:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/22000/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/18500/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/26800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/35700/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/41800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/3590/
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/1662/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/44200/

There's plenty more. I've bought around a hundred games now off Steam. Most were worth buying.

Apparently Steam finally fixed Offline Mode sometimes not working!

Looks like next month they're also fixing Offline Mode sometimes not working! :P

But in all seriousness... Steam has amazing prices and convenience. It's a great platform. It's also where most of the great indy titles end up. Some of the best older games also end up there (and on GOG) as do strange retro or creative games.

Some of my favourites:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/22000/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/18500/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/26800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/35700/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/41800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/3590/
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/1662/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/44200/

There's plenty more. I've bought around a hundred games now off Steam. Most were worth buying.

Apparently Steam finally fixed Offline Mode sometimes not working!

Looks like next month they're also fixing Offline Mode sometimes not working! :P

But in all seriousness... Steam has amazing prices and convenience. It's a great platform. It's also where most of the great indy titles end up. Some of the best older games also end up there (and on GOG) as do strange retro or creative games.

Some of my favourites:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/22000/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/18500/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/26800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/35700/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/41800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/3590/
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/1662/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/44200/

There's plenty more. I've bought around a hundred games now off Steam. Most were worth buying.

Apparently Steam finally fixed Offline Mode sometimes not working!

Looks like next month they're also fixing Offline Mode sometimes not working! :P

But in all seriousness... Steam has amazing prices and convenience. It's a great platform. It's also where most of the great indy titles end up. Some of the best older games also end up there (and on GOG) as do strange retro or creative games.

Some of my favourites:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/22000/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/18500/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/26800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/35700/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/41800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/3590/
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/1662/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/44200/

There's plenty more. I've bought around a hundred games now off Steam. Most were worth buying.

Apparently Steam finally fixed Offline Mode sometimes not working!

Looks like next month they're also fixing Offline Mode sometimes not working! :P

But in all seriousness... Steam has amazing prices and convenience. It's a great platform. It's also where most of the great indy titles end up. Some of the best older games also end up there (and on GOG) as do strange retro or creative games.

Some of my favourites:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/22000/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/18500/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/26800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/35700/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/41800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/3590/
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/1662/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/44200/

There's plenty more. I've bought around a hundred games now off Steam. Most were worth buying.

Apparently Steam finally fixed Offline Mode sometimes not working!

Looks like next month they're also fixing Offline Mode sometimes not working! :P

But in all seriousness... Steam has amazing prices and convenience. It's a great platform. It's also where most of the great indy titles end up. Some of the best older games also end up there (and on GOG) as do strange retro or creative games.

Some of my favourites:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/22000/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/18500/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/26800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/35700/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/41800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/3590/
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/1662/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/44200/

There's plenty more. I've bought around a hundred games now off Steam. Most were worth buying.

Apparently Steam finally fixed Offline Mode sometimes not working!

Looks like next month they're also fixing Offline Mode sometimes not working! :P

But in all seriousness... Steam has amazing prices and convenience. It's a great platform. It's also where most of the great indy titles end up. Some of the best older games also end up there (and on GOG) as do strange retro or creative games.

Some of my favourites:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/22000/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/18500/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/26800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/35700/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/41800/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/3590/
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/1662/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/44200/

There's plenty more. I've bought around a hundred games now off Steam. Most were worth buying.

And which of those games currently has over 66000 players online (combining both versions)?

It seems that your stance doesn't extend to the gaming community at large.

Love them or hate the, Valve & Steam are supplying you with good info:
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

According to Steam's H/W Survey, 39.33% of machines are running either XP or Win2k. That means no DX10 or newer.

As Pentium100 stated, why would a game company purposely close itself off to nearly 40% of the active gamer market? That's dumb. There are exceptions and a few DX10 only titles (FutureMark's game, "Shattered Horizons" for example, but what else would you expect from a benchmark company?).

As for consoles, I've never developed for them, but known a few people that have, and the other people pointing out the ease of developing for a uniform h/w platform is god. As such, I can't decry developers leaning towards Console titles. For evidence, look at almost every PC game now, there will be issues with some people not able to play the game.. either because of old drivers, incompatibilities, crappy hardware, and a myrid of interfering applications that might be installed on the box.

Half-Life 1 was ported to Source awhile ago. So was Counter-Strike

Half-Life 1 was ported to Source awhile ago. So was Counter-Strike

(22.99 + 16.88 + 10.92 + 7.60) = 58.39% of gamers systems are Vista or Win7 according to the latest (February 2010) Steam Hardware Survey

Only a declining 21.55% of users have both Windows XP and a DX10 or DX11 GPU, which shows us that even though DX10/11 hardware is increasing in popularity, its not increasing as fast as the Vista/7 adoption rate is.

The problem with your 80% vs 40% market share argument isnt the fact that you made the numbers up on the spot, but rather you think that this is primarily a GPU phenomena.

The big hurdle for game developers these days is scaling CPU needs, with 55% of gamers having dual core systems and 25% having quad core systems. Unlike graphics stuff, its not easy to trim back the CPU needs of a game without fundamentally altering it. On the GPU can they throw fewer polygons (LOD was a solved problem a decade ago), use faster shaders, offer lower resolutions, etc.. they just can't do the same with AI code, and messing with physics is a recipe for disaster.

Valve has solid gold in terms of information in this regard: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

• 3% DX11
• 53% DX10*
• 39% DX9
• 5% DX8 or lower

The simple answer is that 95% of the PC gaming market** can use DX9 while only 56% can use DX10.

* That 39% for DX9 includes 22% people with DX10 hardware using DX9 Win XP.
** Assuming Steam account holders who allow the HW survey are indicative of the relevant PC gaming market. Personally I'm inclined to assume it's not far off, at least not so far that it matters.

...of all 3.3% of the market:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

AMD had a bad stretch just before the 3000's. Horrible drivers around then. If he happened to hit that generation, and had to fight with 5 different crashing drivers over several months, that might explain his stance.

Right now nVidia is having a similar thing going on - a few driver versions were overheating their cards. If you bought a card and those were the drivers on the CD(impossible - they were only distributed via download), you might think poorly of constantly-BSOD'ing Windows. :P

I haven't had a driver related crash in quite some time. Before finding my stable overclock limits, I was crashing a lot, but now I'm good. The one exception is this game, which relies on Microsoft's XNA framework. The demo BSOD's my PC every time. (nv4_disp.dll crash) I'm going to blame any company but nVidia, since my current driver works in 150+ other games.

My crystal ball says people will buy games online which can't be resold. Oh wait, that was my crystal ball OF THE PAST. My bad.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/10180/

Here's your ladder out of hell (and into another).

Steaming from Valve Software's?

Is Valve going to start targeting OpenGL?

Yes: "The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward."