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Why Valve Wants To Port Games To Linux: Because Windows 8 Is a Catastrophe
An anonymous reader writes "Gabe Newell wants to support Linux because he think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in PC space. He wants to move away from a closed ecosystem of Microsoft Windows 8. He recently made a rare appearance at Casual Connect, an annual videogame conference in Seattle. From the allthingsd article: 'The big problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don't realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior. We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It's a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we'll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that's true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality.' Some Linux users think that this is a win-win situation for Linux users as it will brings good game titles on the Linux system that haven't been there and it will protect steam business model from both Apple and Microsoft."
Windows 8 is a catastrophe only for those who use it with a keyboard and mouse. For the rest of us, it is the greatest desktop operating system.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Most of the games on Steam will be DirectX, not OpenGL.
No sig today...
Look no further than iOS and Android. No matter what the fanbois of each platform say, games invariably are among the top downloads.
Speculation has it that one of the reasons Valve is bringing Steam to Linux is that they are developing a "Steambox" PC-based game console that would run Linux and Steam. Valve has also been confirmed to be working on a version of Steam that plays well with TV screens and gamepad controllers so Steambox would be a natural extension of that. Though I forget whether there were any rumors on Steambox itself though or whether people just saw the rumors of Linux support and gamepad/TV support and put two and two together...
If they are serious about this, they need to get Dell or HP to start building gaming oriented linux desktops and notebooks. Linux will never gain traction as long as the users have to actively decide to install it.
So the summary is implying that several years ago when Linux Steam work began, somehow Valve knew that Windows 8 would be bad even before Microsoft had done much with it beyond initial planning? TFA actually presents a much more balanced picture: Gabe Newell had an interview, and spoke about many things including wearable computers, open platforms, and Linux support. As usual, the Slashdot submitter posted the most inflammatory piece, and the editors like it that way. TFA only even mentions Windows once, in the quote TFS copied!
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
In my opinion, the biggest hurdle that Valve will face won't be porting Steam itself over to Linux, but porting the library of games over.
While I don't know what the actual facts and figures are, I think that it's a fairly safe bet that most of the games on there will have been coded around Microsoft's DirectX graphics API, making the games themselves Windows-only. Yes, they can be rewritten to use OpenGL instead, but this would require substantial effort -- Valve would have the resources to do this with their own titles, but some of the other publishers on Steam may be of the opinion that it's not worth the effort.
This is as close to a perfect example as one can get as to why vendor lock-in is a bad thing. Arguably, the DirectX lock-in is probably why gaming on OS X hasn't really taken off either.
Still, this move by Valve could well be the snowball that sets off the avalanche...
I don't think it's possible to understate how much of a monumental task this is. Not just for Valve, but for everyone with an interest in the Linux world.
If Valve wants this to succeed, they'll need to do more than just port their games and Steam to the platform. They'll need to really get the likes of AMD and nVidia on board to get better driver support, they'll need to convince the big publishers that it's worth taking the time to port their games and find some way to make WINE and its equivalents run at nearly native speed for the ones that can't be easily ported for whatever reason.
Then you have to deal with all the old DRM schemes that still exist and throw a fit even on newer versions of Windows, never mind a completely different OS. SecuROM rootkits? Yeah, good luck with that.
Still, for all the issues, all the potential pitfalls I really do wish Valve the best of luck with this as it can only be a good thing for everyone. Well, everyone except Microsoft maybe.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Even if games was a major factor in holding Linux back, just making Steam available is not going to fix that.
Steam was launched for Mac two years ago, but other than Valve's own games the only top game that has been made available is Civilization V. Some indie games, sure, and Blizzard's games are available outside Steam, but all the other games are just as absent as they were before Steam was ported.
I think this is a Microsoft strategy to take control more and become a PC OEM theselves like Apple. I think they're success will be limited. If I were a PC OEM, I would be real concerned by The Surface and Xbox.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
The only think I ever really have issues opening are horrific kill it with fire power-point presentations so its not a feature i really miss
When do normal people at home open office documents? I never have the need or the desire. You do? Well, that says a lot about you that at home on your game machine, you have a burning desire for some edge case document formatting or love that challenge of creating a truly disastrous spreadsheet.
For most people, wordpad is more then enough. The proof? That so few computers are sold with Office installed.
Why don't you try another one? How about CAD software? Financial software?
Come on, surely you can come up with something better then Office for software people don't use on game machines at home?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
for the first time, or at all, BECAUSE of games? I know I did. I know that they taught me lots of things - especially even just programming very rudimentary games on the apple deuce in 7th and 8th grade. That gave me a huge appreciation for computers, what they can do, and what a good product looks like. My text based zork type games were very easy to write, however the pixelized boxing game (that I was creating with the wrong process) took many many lines of code and required mass critical thinking.
And I can relate this to what was supposed to be a huge blockbuster, although I don't know if their programmers are just new, inexperienced, or just don't know what a good game is - or, they were told to dumb it down as the company wanted an incoming stream of income like they had with their graphical chat room (WoW).
Steam has a lot of OpenGl ports for OSX.
I just posted this on my blog...
Steam on Linux is a strategic move for Valve. They have enjoyed success on the Windows and Mac platforms for years and now they have recently announced that the penguin crowd will get to enjoy the games (no, not the Olymic ones).
Why am I even bothering to point this out? Windows 8 is lurking, that's why.. and Gabe Newell, the boss at Valve, knows it. Speaking at the recent Casual Connect conference in Seattle, Gabe expressed his concerns and criticisms of Windows 8 and in particularly the new Windows Store.
Why?
Because in order to make the Windows Store a success, Microsoft needs to block the competition, just like Apple does with its App/Mac stores. As Steam is an online store itself for gamers, this is where its going to hurt Valve as potentially, no more Steam on Windows.
Microsoft could very well only have games that link to its own XBox system. This makes sense as a business and to up-sell to existing Windows customers.
Gabe Newell worked at Microsoft for 13 years before he started up Valve, and its here where they have recently embraced the penguins as a "hedging strategy" to further gain customers. He is worried that potentially losing the Windows customer base will cause lasting damage to their own customer base. I'm sure he thought that when he said "Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space."
Now think about this...
Steam has an average of 4 million users connected at any given time.
Windows has an average desktop market share of, say 80%. That's 3 million gamers.
Now suddenly, Steam is no longer available on Windows, but it is on Linux.
Will those gamers switch? Or even try?
Some will move to a console, some to a Mac. But some, lets say a optimistic 30% or 1 million of those start using Linux, just for Steam? That's a lot.
The Year Of the Linux Desktop? No seriously... stop laughing, it may happen.
Meh. We hear the old refrain every time Microsoft comes out with a new version of Windows. "It's the worst thing ever.". "People will be migrating to OSX/Linux/whatever in droves." The sad fact is that businesses and IT are so heavily invested in the Windows ecosystem that they have no choice but to eventually upgrade. Think of all the specialized apps out there on the Windows platform: banking apps, auto shop diagnostic apps, imaging apps, etc. Even if developers want to switch to another OS, how are they going to migrate their users? Tell them they have to throw out their PCs and buy Macs? Or wipe their drives and set up an Ubuntu partition?
Hell, ATI/AMD has been trying to make working OpenGL drivers for longer than that!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Because in order to stay modern they are going to have to make Steam compatible and integrate it well with Windows 8 because that is what a huge chunk of PC users are going to use simply because the OEM slapped it on there.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
... is DRIVERS!!! Good luck getting real open source drivers out of Nvidia, ATI/AMD, and Intel for their graphics hardware.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Huh? Install Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. Login. Double click excel file. It opens. Where's the nightmare?
The problem for Valve is that Windows 8 is going down the app store route, and the main point of Steam is really to be an easy download and auto-update platform for games. Sure, Steam does other things too, but if it weren't for the distribution channel (which is the only distribution channel for Valve's own big name games) I don't really believe anyone would stick with it just for the minor perks. This leaves only two possibilities:
1. Steam has a powerful lock-in. In this case, a lot of people who have spent a lot of money with them based basically on trust are about to have their faith questioned. Since Steam's standards terms and conditions are a joke as far as guaranteeing anything to anyone but themselves, this leaves two variations:
1a. They will do right by their customers at almost any price, assuming this is even possible with whatever technical and commercial infrastructure MS adopts to go with Windows 8. This might save their reputation and business model, but would surely hurt Valve's bottom line significantly.
1b. They can't or won't pay that price and customers who move to Windows 8 will suffer a worse user experience, limited ability to buy new games, or in the worst case lose access to the existing library they've already paid for. In any case, Steam will take a huge PR hit that will at best severely damage Valve's credibility.
2. Steam's lock-in isn't that powerful. In this case, Microsoft can beat them at their own game (no pun intended) and outright steal their business.
There are exactly zero outcomes in there that are positive for Steam, and some represent an existential threat.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
In an era where Apple can patent a fucking rectangle with rounded corners, you can bet pretty much EVERYTHING is patented these days. It's almost guaranteed that the second you achieve any success at all on a given product, reversed engineered or not, you *will* be sued (probably by multiple companies).
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
He doesn't really need any more publicity, if you're any sort of PC gamer you'd be among the minority not knowing who he is. He's only the founder of one of the more prolific PC game devs of all time, in addition to him having created the platform that revolutionized digital distribution and made it a viable market to enter into.
I have wondered for years why game-makers haven't already started working on writing games for Linux so that they can sell games that boot directly to the game on any system.
To me it seems so obvious. Now you don't have to worry about which version of what a user has on their computer and the user doesn't need to install the game.
Why hasn't this already been done?
this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice
the real thing holding back Linux is games?
how about the fact that opening MS Office docs on Linux with one of the many "Open Office" solutions is still a nightmare?
You are right, opening Microsoft proprietary documents on other systems is a pain. It's almost like someone planned it that way.
Call them open if you wish, they aren't.
Steam is an appstore, Windows 8 too.
Yep, it's a catastrophe. For Steam.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Did you miss the bit where they are porting L4D2 over already?
And there are dozens of games on Steam that have a Linux port. Almost anything offered in a humble bundle, for a start, not to mention the DosBox games, Quake series, etc.
They just don't have a client on Linux so you can play them through Steam yet.
No, Steam has a lot of Windows games wrapped in Cider so as to do the bare minimum effort.
Yes Microsoft will have their own app store, but Steam has many people locked in right now...
Which is why they have to act as quickly as possible, while they still have an advantage. Both Apple and MS are emphasizing their first-party store experiences. Over time Steam risks becoming irrelevant. Steam needs to encourage more Linux adoption, as the last desktop platform with seemingly no interest in baked in commercial digital distribution mechanisms quite like Steam.
Additionally, steam stands to gain significant perceived value the more platforms they support. If hypothetically in the future a title purchased once for the user works for their Windows PC, their Linux SteamBox, and their Android tablet, that is significant value that MS nor Apple will ever provide, which helps to keep Windows platform users loyal in a world with more and more diverse OS platforms in their day to day life.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Windows 8 App Store is a catastrophe for Valve business model.
Better than the /, summaries that have nothing to do with TFA.
Slashcomma.org, I love that site!
Clicked pie.
To be fair, the windows client isn't all that hot either. It takes several seconds to switch between tabs, pressing the forward and back buttons takes a while to work (apparently its internal browser has no cache), skips pages, etc. The downloads screen is completely unresponsive, there isn't even visual feedback that you've clicked the pause or resume buttons, you just click then wait for it to decide if it's going to start or stop.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
1. It's immense work.
2. It's even more work to make it efficient, because a would-be reimplementor will have to know why things are the way they are rather than just how it is.
3. It's chasing a moving target. It will never, ever be as good as the latest version from Microsoft.
The only reason to do it is backwards compatibility. That can be a good reason, for a long time it's was easier to run old DOS games in Dosbox than with Window's backwards compatibility stuff.
Better to use openGL. For Android, iOS, mac, and all consoles but xbox it's what you will need anyway. For the rest of the stuff DirectX does - well, Steam has just hired Sam Lantinga. SDL is one of the nicest C libraries I know, but Lantinga has worked for a long time on a rewrite based on what he (and the world) has learned since 2000 - and since he has a damn impressive CV, I expect that's a lot.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Quality business decision making can't occur if there is no data. So how do 99.9% of companies make decisions if they don't have data?
They think. They draw on experience. They hypothesise scenarios and choose the best strategy. They go with their gut instinct honed after years of making millions in profit. The kind of people that make change and earn millions *DON'T* stick in safe industries where data is easily available on every possible aspect and then just pick the safest route. They take risks and gambles and sometimes they pay off (and then they make more millions) and sometimes they don't (and then you'd never have heard of them).
I don't think Gabe is anything special - he's a bit of a self-important loudmouth in my job, like Jon Romero and his kind. But if Gabe thinks something about the gaming industry, specifically the online purchasing parts of the PC gaming industry, you should really listen, whether you agree or not, whether you think his opinion is biased or not. Because he basically owns that industry at the moment.
Pity you didn't think.
Direct3D and OpenGL are basically identical these days. OpenGL is more flexible, but to be honest that flexibility just ends up shooting yourself in the foot. Most GL developers simply create GL wrapper classes that are either based on the D3D classes, or they've grouped relevent items from the GL spec (and ended up with exactly the same result, although they'd have taken much longer to get there). OpenGL doesn't really have an equivalent for D3D FX files, so that ends up being a mammoth chunk of work you could do without. Mind you, if you're also targetting console, you'll be writing your own form of FX in all likelyhood.
Joypads aren't too much of an issue. The AV components of DirectX would be a little bit more involved, but not impossible (OpenAL / fmod / whatever). The biggest problems you're likely to encounter is if people have built their code with heavy dependencies on things like X files, Pix, FX files, game server components, etc. Again, it's not impossible to roll your own (or use a middleware component), it's just a massive ball ache, and a bit of a time sink.....
Two possibilities:
Wine has an implementation of DirectX 9 (and a lot of other Windows APIs). It can either be used as an emulator (use it to run windows .EXE files), or you can compile code against it to produce unix native binaries (Write code using microsoft APIs, but get a Linux ELF as an output).
The Gallium3D driver infrastructure (as used by most opensource drivers on Linux - the official Intel, the AMD-helped, and reverse engineered for Nvidia hardware) is modular. There is a 3D DirectX 10/11 front end written for it.
This could be a starting points for providing DirectX APIs for games on Steam.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I really wish people would look objectively at windows 8 and stop just repeating the things others have said.
Everyone keeps saying it's enormously different, but here's the truth, other than a ton of reported efficiency improvements under the covers, there's one change that everyone is up in arms about:
The start menu was replaced. Oooo scaarrry... That's the only UI change. Just one, and somehow people act like this OS is so far removed from windows as we know it.
Here's the truth: If you don't think someone is going to have a program out that behaves identical to the current start menu right when windows 8 comes out, you're fooling yourself. It will probably even be better as it will likely be open source and community driven giving even greater customization if you want. Moreover, half of you play around in different window managers whenever you feel like which causes major UI changes. So slashdotters are the last ones that should be griping. Heck, by creating a simple folder menu on your task bar that points to your desktop or wherever else you keep your shortcuts (there's probably still a start menu folder you could just point it at) you can just recreate the same behavior you're used to.
Now the other side of the truth: For non-technical folks like us who aren't extremely tied to their start menu and probably find the menu driven behavior less preferable to their desktop's behavior for choosing items (as icon driven interfaces have by apple been shown to be more usable by the masses), the new start menu is likely quite preferable.
Given that technical folks like us will adjust almost immediately, and chances are the general population will by my wager like the new behavior more (so long as they can avoid their perceptions being tainted by the constant microsoft-is-for-idiots meme), I am going to go out on a limb and say Windows 8 will probably be an extremely successful operating system. There is now one caveat however; there are a fairly significant amount of changes under the covers I am to understand, so as long as they haven't compromised compatibility and stability, I think they'll be in great standing. I suppose only other caveat: The javascript on the desktop as applications approach may result in some horrible programs written for windows 8 that taints people's view of the overall OS.
Now quit spewing what everyone (including me) says, and go read about/try windows 8 yourselves. And longer than just opening the start menu to shout "NO!" and uninstalling it like so many windows->linux converts do. As for the claims of "Shill!", good for you; you are capable of identifying all somewhat positive statements about a thing as being clearly false marketing. Hypocrite, you probably said something good about yourself once. Sucker.
You are behind the times, and should really be firing your complaints at Nvidia. For the last couple of years I've used ATI cards for GL development exclusively. Unlike Nvidia cards they actually implement the GL spec to the letter. With Nvidia cards you can pretty much call any old combination of GL functions, and something will appear on screen. They never fail! This is a problem because you never find out errors in your GL code until after you've shipped the product. With ATI, if you pass an invalid arg, or call a method at the wrong time, they will generate the correct error. This sadly leads to a situation where a developer uses an NVidia card for development, ships, and then it won't run on ATI or Intel cards. The upshot is that people incorrectly assume that ATI drivers suck. They don't. Nvidia drivers are the ones that suck!
This is one strategy. Another is to publish games with a LiveCD option, by which they burn a Fedora or Ubuntu ISO from the game and boot. Fedora or Ubuntu because Debian and CentOS are often behind, and developers will want the latest stuff because hype etc.
It's actually fully possible to boot from an image, too, in which case they could output a $HOME/Valve/Games directory filled with ISOs and put a rudimentary mid-boot-loader in /boot. The mid-boot loader would use syslinux memdisk to load a 64MB hard drive image into RAM and boot from it (you can add a grub entry to do this, yes). That in turn would mount /home or / and scan everything (either under /home/*/Valve/ISO or under /*/Valve/ISO) for games. The user picks a game from the list, the ISO gets mounted, and kexec is used to boot its kernel and begin the process of loading the LiveCD.
From there, a configuration file is loaded based on kernel command line parameters, which points to a directory (like /home/_Valve/) containing all persistent storage (save games, network settings, the like). Hell if you want to get fancy, we can load /etc/passwd and /etc/group from / proper and merge in all UIDs between 500 and 10000 and store saves in the user's $HOME proper, with proper permissions for the user, even make the user log into the system to play. In either case, permanent system settings and game saves are easily accessible. The system could even easily kexec back out into the original loader (or back to the bootloader).
Support my political activism on Patreon.
They are just promoting Linux because they are secretly developing a Linux Gaming Console.... :D
OpenGL is the equivalent of Direct3D (a subset of DirectX), as you've made clear in your post. SDL seems to be the most popular library for doing the "rest" of the stuff that DirectX does for crossplatform programs (and also on Linux in particular), it's pretty low-level, acting just to give a unified-across-platforms interface to the hardware, but entirely usable, and has been observed being used by major companies (e.g. the official Linux port of Neverwinter Nights). (It also integrates well with OpenGL.) There are a couple of alternatives, such as FreeGLUT and Allegro, but they don't really have the same sort of marketshare in Linux gaming as SDL does. (I imagine DirectX is much more full-featured than SDL+OpenGL is, though; it's another issue as to how heavily those features are used, though.)
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
as a long-time ATI fan....
the ATI drivers DO suck. They don't upgrade nicely, often break their own config......which sucks..
but I can deal with that...... no problem....
However killing support of a card when it's 1yr old I can't do. I'm sorry, Fuck you ATI. Give me Driver support for 3 years MINIMUM
If you're successful in marketing a software product built on a proprietary platform, you can expect the proprietor of that platform to attempt a takeover of your market, at some point. If you build on an open platform and are successful, you'll quite possibly have competition sooner, but it will likely be fair competition.
The problems with this idea seem to outmatch the idea. (Not that I'm against it.)
1. API's. Linux is a sea of APIs and they shift like the wind. In the area of drivers, kernel, gfx api's, - its frankly not something I expect Steam to navigate easily.
In windows a lot of development was based on OpenGL, DirectX. OpenGL is certainly doable in Linux, but good luck in having it work in an expectable way - I say that given Intel, ATI, Nvidia drivers..
2. I think it can only happen if someone like steam and perhaps its partners build and define and work with OpenGL, and a directX alike environment. And early on I think to even think about making this work, it would probably need to be a platform idea where steam get hardware makers to make a box that has some fundamental hardware they and their user base would not have to fight. A steambox? Sure. And others could make their hardware 'steambox' ready by supplying hardware that fitted this working model. An early stab would seem to me to require Nvidia - as I think their closed source drivers are the only drivers *today* that would be viable.
3. Other areas like sound and multimedia are just as messy in Linux. Don't see any other way than Steam and partners getting involved in some way to keep some stuff defined.
4. Seems like a good basis to campaign for an open game/source standard.
We`re all equal
At least Valve is teaming up with Intel to help Intel create working opensource drivers for Intel IGP, which is getting decently powerful. I would be willing to use an IvyBridge or faster Intel IGP to make a Linux "gaming" box.
You are right, opening Microsoft proprietary documents on other systems is a pain. Luckily, in the world of grown-ups, that's usually not a problem. I've never, in my entire working career, sent an Office document to somebody and had them not be able to easily use it. I would not do business with a fanatic that refused to buy Office.
Your statement illustrates the effectiveness of the strategy. To you, anyone who avoids using office isn't just an advocate of open systems, he's a fanatic.
how about the fact that opening MS Office docs on Linux with one of the many "Open Office" solutions is still a nightmare?
This tripped my FUD detector, because I've rarely/never had a problem reading or writing .doc files with OpenOffice/LibreOffice. Then again, I don't see many of the crazier examples you might find out there.
But the implications of your reasoning are troubling: Let's all choose the crappiest, most proprietary format for documents, because the company that offers it has market power and wants us to. It's like swimming in the pond with the most turds floating around in it, because we've already paid to get in and who wants to carry their floaty toys to the clean, free lake over the hill?
They'll need to really get the likes of AMD and nVidia on board to get better driver support
Already underway. For example, they don't only look for linux game developpers to hire, they are also looking for people with kernel and drivers experience.
Spend some time on Linux-related news sites like Phoronix.
They'll need to convince the big publishers that it's worth taking the time to port their games
The "taking the time" won't be such a huge deal if the game engine can already run on Linux.
- Valve are porting Source to Linux (and as they already have an OpenGL back-end on their Mac version, it's not that much difficult) (specially since employee have already been fooling with Linux for some time).
- Lots of other 3rd party engines have Linux ports.
For games using these engines, porting to Linux won't be that much difficult. And once the Linux market is "seeded" with Valves own games (and the indie games already having a Linux port, like most of the Humble Bundle games) that nascent market could be an incentive to make the "not-so-difficult" port.
Now, for games with their own custom DirectX-only engines without even an OpenGL backend: yup for them it's going to be more difficult, and Valve needs to find a way to persuade them to make the jump.
and find some way to make WINE and its equivalents run at nearly native speed for the ones that can't be easily ported for whatever reason.
Then you have to deal with all the old DRM schemes that still exist and throw a fit even on newer versions of Windows, never mind a completely different OS. SecuROM rootkits? Yeah, good luck with that.
Still, for all the issues, all the potential pitfalls I really do wish Valve the best of luck with this as it can only be a good thing for everyone. Well, everyone except Microsoft maybe.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
He's right in many more ways than one. Hedging his bets against a future in which Microsoft is his biggest rival is only one reason for doing this. The other big reason is simply to expand the gaming market, and to lead it.
It's no secret that the Linux world is full of endearing geeks and nerds who love to play video games --- there could hardly be a bigger truism! And yet they are totally under-served on their favorite platform, and frequently have to run a Windows box for the sole reason of being able to play their games. That presents an obvious business opportunity.
By supplying Linux gamers with good games on their favorite platform, not only is he expanding his customer base to a whole new audience of Linux-only gamers, but is also making it possible for Linux gamers to avoid running a Windows box at all. And that can remove one of his rivals from the competition entirely. It would be a move of genius.
What's more, if Linux gaming takes off bigtime (his company certainly has every opportunity to make that happen), then he will be the leader in a new gaming frontier, and everyone else will be playing catchup. That is worth a gamble all by itself, and it's not even a high-risk venture.
I think Gabe's business nose can sense a big opportunity here, a huge and almost unexploited market that he can make his own, while at the same time safeguarding his future against Microsoft.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
With Nvidia cards you can pretty much call any old combination of GL functions, and something will appear on screen. They never fail! This is a problem because you never find out errors in your GL code until after you've shipped the product. This sadly leads to a situation where a developer uses an NVidia card for development, ships, and then it won't run on ATI or Intel cards. The upshot is that people incorrectly assume that ATI drivers suck. They don't. Nvidia drivers are the ones that suck!
So you're saying Nvidia is the IE6 of video cards?
If Gabe realized how much of a killing they could make with a steam-powered console that included kb/mouse/joystick, and a standardized set of hardware, they'd do it and become a HUGE competitive fore in the console market.
Done right, given Valve has a library of titles nobody else can touch right now, Valve could put the PS3 and 360 on their asses.
Hey Gabe, let's get a Project Sauna going!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
They already decided to support MacOS. So they're already at least half way there. It's not like this is exactly a new direction for them. They have been diversifying for awhile now.
So the fixation on Direct3D may be unwarranted.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Everyone will just skip it like ME and Vista and MS will rush out a new OS that doesn't suck so hard once they realize how bad they fucked up. This isn't the first time MS has given birth to a stillborn and then tried to convince us with the Dead Parrot sketch.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
OEMs respond to market demands. If it's clear to an OEM that Windows 7 is going to sell more machines than Windows 8, they're going to put Windows 7 on the machines. It might take a while for this to come to pass, but if Win8 is as big a disaster as I think it will be, it'll happen.
Remember the Vista downgrade stuff? Customers hated Vista so much that OEMs would ship a machine with Vista and a promise to the customer that they could downgrade to WinXP for free? Well, if Win8 is rejected by the buying public even more strongly, we might just see them skip the downgrade step and ship the machines with the older OS to begin with.
to even install software (on Linux) requires fairly comprehensive computer knowledge.
Laughable. Consider installing a utility, or a Tetris clone or whatever.
Linux (Ubuntu):
1/ Open software center
2/ Search for application by name or function (or browse categories if preferred)
3/ Click to download and install.
Windows:
1/ Open browser
2/ Search for application and decide which one to consider
3/ Search for information about chosen application to find out if it's really malware. Repeat 2,3 until satisfied.
4/ Search for information about download sites to find out if they host malware versions of non-malware applications. Repeat until satisfied.
5/ Download installer.
6/ Run installer.
You picked the one function where Linux is so clearly easier to use than Windows that only a troll, shill or idiot would deny it.
Most of the games on Steam will be DirectX, not OpenGL.
Why will they be? Most of them appear to be OpenGL at the moment.
They could be booting a LiveCD image in the background while they're displaying all of the AMD, ATI, Nvidia, Intel, Dolby Digital, SquareEnix, LucaArts, EA, and other development and production house, etc. full screen ads that come up when you launch any major title these days. I doubt anyone would notice the additional delay of loading an entire operating system.
This summer, around the time of Catalyst 12.7, AMD will be dropping support for pre-Evergreen hardware from their proprietary graphics driver. This means that the Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 series will cease to be supported by the mainline driver. The support will live on in a legacy branch of Catalyst, but that branch for Linux users will not be updated with new X.Org Server and Linux kernel support.
You were saying?
Set your steam to offline mode.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
You are behind the times, and should really be firing your complaints at Nvidia.
Discussions on graphics card performance show both suck in different areas.
They never fail! This is a problem because you never find out errors in your GL code until after you've shipped the product.
Or new drivers are released which break things like in Rage.
The upshot is that people incorrectly assume that ATI drivers suck. They don't. Nvidia drivers are the ones that suck!
Perhaps you missed the recent article stating AMD/ATI video drivers are incompatible with system-wide ASLR. 'Always On' DEP combined with 'Always On' ASLR are effective exploit mitigations. However, most people don't know about 'Always On' ASLR since Microsoft had to hide it from EMET with an 'EnableUnsafeSettings' registry key — because AMD/ATI video drivers will cause a BSOD on boot if 'Always On' ASLR is enabled.
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Unless you have a two-year-old netbook with a Mobility Radeon chip. Then ATI decides to drop you and you're stuck with the choice of a fglrx driver that crashes X when something tries to go full screen, or an open source driver package that forces you to disconnect and reconnect your monitors and then reconfigure your display settings every time you reboot.
You forgot step 7 for Windows. Click ok for administration mode and next, next, next, and finally make sure to hook off those extraordinary browser bars.
What? None of that is true. Or perhaps it's time to replace that 486DX2.
Newell was saying windows 8 is a trainwreck because Microsoft is closing the ecosystem down so that you need to use their app store to get anything sold. That the PC becomes a loss leader for the app store, is what will push OEMs out of the business. For Valve/Steam, it is the classic case where someone does something for a while and makes a reasonable living until MS notices and they move in and squeeze everyone else out. Whether windows 8 works well or sells well is completely beside Newell's point. He is a third party app store, who figures MS has him in his sights, even though it is really just collateral damage in it's competition with Apple. He's right.