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John Carmack: Kudos To Valve, But Linux Is Still Not a Viable Gaming Market
dartttt writes "John Carmack recently presented a keynote at QuakeCon. He said Linux is still not a commercially viable gaming platform, and the two forays they have made into the Linux commercial market have not been successful. Valve's announcement about Steam for Linux changes things a bit, but it remains a tough sell."
Let the man say whatever the hell he wants.
I remember a time when people used to say DOS is the gaming platform of choice. Windows? Good enough for shitty-looking Reversi and Solitaire, but not much else.
Then Windows became the gaming platform of choice. Sounds familiar?
What I mean is, if Linux is to becomes a good gaming platform, someone has to get the ball rolling.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Without a good selection of available games, many people won't switch from Windows to Linux. And if many people don't switch to Linux, game publishers will be loathe to port any major games to Linux. -------- Steam may change this. It may change it a LOT. Even if just a dozen or so AAA games get ported to Linux, it would be a positive start. ----- I would love to run Linux instead of Windows 7. I really would. But the lack of games and some other applications on Linux keeps me on Win 7. ----- Good luck to any Linux gaming pioneers. Carmageddon: Reincarnation will be ported to Linux, so that is one potentially major game title being ported to the tux.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
I can't believe this guy thinks that their "forays into Linux commercial market" are even close to the scale of Valve porting Source.
Speaking for myself - I've definitely been using Ubuntu practically exclusively now for a few months (12.04 is a joy). I WOULD get rid of my Windows PC if it weren't for gaming. This is definitely good news for the discriminating user. I'd like to see all of my Steam games moved to Linux (never going to happen), but a Steam version of a game will make a difference to me. Eagerly awaiting LfD2 on Linux. Using a closed source OS definitely makes me nervous, there've been too many cases in the past few years of manufacturers pulling info from users when they shouldn't - would like an OS that's open to community scrutiny.
Is the problem there are no gamers on Linux or the problem there are no games on Linux?
I am Linux only.
I play MassEffect, Skyrim, MindCraft, LoTRO, GuildWars, played WoW for far to long.
I will play GuildWars2.
I paid for but have still not activated SW:ToR. It worked on Linux in Beta and then they did a zig/zag and it did not. I know there is a wine patch. Just have not done it and interest in doing so is decling.
I am a paying Linux gamer. I would have given more money to SW:ToR, but they broke their game on Linux.
When Steam does it's "Check System" thing it reports my machine as windows *sigh*, so I am not even sure I am counted.
There is a Linux market, just not sure anyone knows it.
His company's foray into Linux gaming hasn't panned out. That doesn't mean that a different strategy might not work. That's like saying that because MS tried to find consumer success with tablets for over a decade that there is no chance anyone else could do it...er...
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Who's left to sell to?
If the FPS is better, the Windows-gamers will come...
The Android userbase is pretty large.
That wasn't Carmack, that was John Romero. And, no, I don't remember Daikatana either.
I love when nerds praise JC but then he speaks the truth about linux and they start dissing him and calling him irrelevant. carmack: OPENGL FASTER THAN DIRECTX!!! TELL EVERYONE!! carmack: LINUX IS STILL NOT VIABLE GAMING PLATFORM!!! DOWN WITH CARMACK HES IRRELEVANT AND DOESNT KNOW WHAT HES TALKING ABOUT!!!!
sfasdfs
Especially if the OS is free.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Thankfully, Microsoft is making Linux a viable gaming platform by so utterly screwing up the Windows gaming platform with Windows 8. Valve is just covering its bases.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
id's software never sold on linux, because non of id's games work on linux machines with more than one monitor, which is most linux machines I'd guess. let's hope valve don't make the same mistake.
Carmack's ability to create a "game" is questionable. But with regards to engineering both game and rocket engines, clearly this man is a top tier coder.
Life is not for the lazy.
I would. Step 1 is make a large size of games available for Linux (and make them easy to install; no CLI shit!). Sure, there's a risk, but if you're not taking chances, then why bother do anything?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
As far as I can tell Carmack's efforts boiled down to trying to sell individual games mostly and to just accept things on Linux as they are for better or worse. What Valve is doing is trying to integrate their entire platform and being a game delivery network that works across Windows Mac and Linux, that's exactly what it is...a platform. Just like the browser is a platform. Valve is also apparently working hand in hand with the big players in the Linux graphics card space to make drivers first class. They are profiling to find bottlenecks in how their code integrates with the kernel. Valve is making a very serious effort here and it extends beyond anything Carmack has tried so far. If anything maybe Carmack could learn something instead of just lambasting because he couldn't see it through. Of course these are early days still and Steam for Linux hasn't even been released yet which even more makes me wonder why Carmack is already predicting Doom (get it?) for it.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
It really sucked it down.
The company would have to take a fairly substantial risk in not releasing it on Windows, though, for that to happen. Otherwise people will just get the game on Windows. To bootstrap a platform in the face of entrenched competition, quality exclusives are necessary.
I second that. Rage on its own merits was a mediocre AAA FPS with a buggy launch and consolitis. As a monument to Johm Carmack's overinflated view of his own relevance to gaming in general, it was and continues to be extremely telling. Linux isn't commercially viable for game designers because the market isn't there, and the market isn't there because developers don't make games for it. Valve stepping up and bringing Steam to Linux has the potential to cut that particular Gordian knot. Frankly, Valve is big and relevant enough to do it; Carmack doesn't have the juice to do it if he wanted to anymore.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
First of all, the Linux userbase is really small to begin with. Within that small userbase, you have two relatively large groups:
1. The ideologues, who really believe in RMS's idea that proprietary software is unethical.
2. The cheapskates, who aren't going to pay for software.
Do you have any actual evidence that the Linux userbase is composed primarily of these two groups? Because anecdotally I hear lots of Linux users that are chomping at the bit for Steam to come and looking forward to paying for games. Furthermore, the Humble Indie Bundle has shown that there are gamers on Linux that will pay. Will that translate to profit for Valve et al? Who knows. But it does show that you, dear AC, have no idea what you are talking about.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Now that Steam insists I must sign some of my rights away, it doesn't really matter what platform it runs on anymore.
First of all, the Linux userbase is really small to begin with. Within that small userbase, you have two relatively large groups:
1. The ideologues, who really believe in RMS's idea that proprietary software is unethical.
2. The cheapskates, who aren't going to pay for software.
Considering that I have paid for Linux applications (for my home PCs), and subsequently paid for version upgrades for those applications, I think you need a third category:
3. The people who pay for decent software that fits a particular purpose better than the free options.
In case, you're wondering: Mathematica and Bibble Pro[*]. Both have native Linux versions with excellent support.
[*] Apparently, Bibble Pro was renamed to Corel Aftershot Pro after Corel bought Bibble.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Perhaps Valve could release their own distro with gaming in mind, as it might help unify the community. I could get behind that in a heartbeat.
If Linux is easier to use then Windows 8, then they will get some converts. Windows 8 is a disaster for desktops and that's where desktop gaming is done. Linux needs to do everything it can to put themselves in positino to pick up these people looking at alternatives. Be proactive.
First of all, the Linux userbase is really small to begin with. Within that small userbase, you have two relatively large groups:
1. The ideologues, who really believe in RMS's idea that proprietary software is unethical. 2. The cheapskates, who aren't going to pay for software.
Who's left to sell to?
[citation needed]
Also if that's true, then how come the highest average payment per player are linux users, for the humble bundle as of now?
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
PS3 is running on linux...???
There are three kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't.
First of all, the Linux userbase is really small to begin with. Within that small userbase, you have two relatively large groups:
1. The ideologues, who really believe in RMS's idea that proprietary software is unethical. 2. The cheapskates, who aren't going to pay for software.
Who's left to sell to?
Well. Apparently I don't exist! Good to know.
Until someone decided to try and make them into one. Now there are tons of sales.
Will Linux become a common gaming platform if no one tries? No.
Wow, you seem pretty mad over this. I'm guessing you're a linux user who's excited about valve coming to 1 of the 20.000 distros available (me too btw). Carmack is still VERY relevant btw. If you think Rage means anything you're fooling yourself. Pretty much every modern 3D engine in some way contains his work or is based on his work.
You didn't get it: the "game" for Rage was getting Rage to run on your system, with in game achievements for various textures and colors displaying correctly. The actual run-around-and-shoot-stuff was just DLC for the people who had already won. I haven't won yet, but then again I haven't felt like doing complete AMD driver reinstall yet.
However at the end of the day it will be a huge money looser due to the small desktop install base.
There is absolutely no way that just one data point like that means they will lose money. There is so much more that goes into the economics of a decision like this. Maybe Valve isn't worried about making money right off the bat? Maybe it is a political move? Is MS making money off the XBox in the aggregate yet? Newell is pissed about Windows 8 and that seems to be the primary motivator of this move and not making money in the short term. I'd take a more wait and see approach rather than knee jerk cynicism.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
To the pirates of the Windows userbase? Well, I dunno....
The big difference is that Windows actually was just capable of shitty-looking Reversi or Solitaire back in the day when DOS was still the primary PC gaming platform. DirectX changed that and it was only after the release of DirectX that gaming on Windows became viable.
Linux however has had gaming capabilities for a long time, but still there's a huge lack of compelling titles. The reason why gaming on Linux isn't taking of is because of politics, not a technical reason like with DOS/Windows.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I won't mean anything if the only games they bring over is L4D2 and Portal.
That's pure strawman and you know it. There is no way that only those two games will be on Linux. Peruse steam and look at the games for Mac and that will give you at least an idea of what can be expected for Linux. Also bear in mind the relative ease of porting between OS X and Linux (kind of like porting between iOS and Android) and you instantly add a significant amount of people to your potential non-Windows user base which should have a nice additive effect and make even more games show up in the Mac/Linux column.
Steam on Linux is 100% panic from Valve realizing that Steam is about to become irrelevant.
I'm sure it started out that way but who fucking cares? It's happening so they might as well give it all they have and make it work. As a Linux user I benefit and will definitely buy games.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
About to become irrelevant?
I'd love to hear how you came to that conclusion. Please. Anything?
Yes. And since it has been years since any attempt and Linux use has grown. Perhaps time to try again, or at least take pre-orders with a promise of "if X orders come in, we'll do it for sure".
FWIW - last time they (id) tried, about 11-12 years ago, I bought 3 copies of Q3 for linux - one "l33t tin edition", and 2 "regular" versions (one to use and play, the other for a friend). And, I bought them on pre-order/release day at full retail price.
Shortly after, Loki started selling their stuff, and I bought several (SoF, Mechwarrior, Descent 3d) - wish I had gotten more of 'em.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
I know this will turn into a "chicken or the egg" conversation...
"We shouldn't build games for Linux unless there's a proven market!"
"There can't be a market if there are no games to buy!"
But, there's an obvious "egg" here. There must first be a venturing company with a solid history of great games (*cough* half-life, portal, TF2, etc.) that's willing to take the risk. Forging new markets it ALL ABOUT RISK. If you're stunted by your fear of risk, then you're probably not a good entrepreneur.
Work it Valve. I hope it works out for the best. And if it doesn't, then EVERYONE will still thank you for giving it the ol' Orange Box try!
It's not even questionable. Carmack cannot make a game.
And he doesn't try to. He's listed in the credits for Rage as "Lead Programmer". If you think the game sucked, blame Tim Willits (Lead Designer). Even back in the Commander Keen days, he was just the technical genius, letting Romero et al. do the game design.
Sorry John but successful people create a market, they don't wait for it to be ready for you. Valve working with GPU manufacturers is a signal that they want to create a market. It is sad to say this but Id was a market defining company, now a follower
I for one will happily ditch windows gaming in favour of Linux as soon as Steam has decent coverage for the games I play. I've been wanting this for years, and it really is the primary reason I even have a windows partition--everything else is done on Linux. If Steam can set up wine nicely to play the non-native ports of games I own, I really won't have any reason for keeping it around.
Because they get better performance on Linux? Because just like cars if they are spending money tuning the'll want every piece of their equipment to be as tunable as possible, including the OS? Because it's perceieved as "eliete" and "cool"?
Hell if I know, I just want it to happen.
It's nice to have Steam on Linux but it's a small market and it doesn't make huge sense for Valve to support it except in the context of either a) Getting leverage to compell Microsoft to open up Windows 8 more, or b) Cloud gaming, e.g. porting games to Linux may lighten their costs if they offered hosted titles in the cloud.
The ones who say "I'm only on Windows for the games".
What?
Because of the integration of Microsoft Marketplace in Windows 8 of course.
Games on Steam are non-exclusive. Nobody is preventing publishers who are already selling through Steam from adding their products to Microsoft Marketplace. In time this may mean people will look for games on Microsoft Marketplace (which is already on their system) and not even bother to download & install Steam.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Also if that's true, then how come the highest average payment per player are linux users, for the humble bundle [humblebundle.com] as of now?
Because the people who bought the bundle on Linux are overpaying to send a message?
There's nothing particularly wrong with the technology in RAGE, the gpu transcoding toggle was actually kind of neat to see on/off in something with professional quality art. The game itself was medicore, but Carmack is a technology guy, gameplay is a whole other field these days.
Besides that, the part in question is whether or not you can make any money on Linux games. As one of the few companies that seriously put effort into it, their answer is: no, not really. And given the number of available data points, which is very very small, you can figure that this is interesting. Eve and WoW both have had forms of linux support, Eve ditched the native client because Wine was faster, and blizzard is big enough that they can afford it even if it's not economically sensible.
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2012/01/15/amazon_reveals_2011_s_best-selling_pc_games gives a (imperfect) list of the best selling PC games of 2011. None of them had linux versions at the time (though I'm guessing we'll see Portal 2 on linux eventually). Several of them will run under Wine, but none have native linux support. You can go back a lot of years and keep saying the same thing, almost no one has a native linux client. The number of people in the industry who have any real figures on how successful linux game sales are is very very small, and Carmack is one of those people.
Now in that sense you don't need John Carmack to say it. It could be a fresh MBA monkey, or a summer intern hired by Bethesda to stand up and discuss Linux sales and it would have the same credibility, if they can look at the same spreadsheets. But Carmack still gets press whereas just about anyone else wouldn't. I would be skeptical of taking his advice on a lot of design issues (or on how to get projects done quickly), but that's not what we're talking about here, even then, he can have a lot of good ideas or lessons learned, even if his own company has trouble pulling it off.
Also, this is from a speech at quake con. If John Carmack can't be a celebrity at Quake con there's something seriously wrong with the world.
Yes, there is a huge number of people waiting to pirate top-tier games on Android. id's games would move to the top of the charts of 'games people play without purchasing them'.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I remember a time when people used to say DOS is the gaming platform of choice. Windows? Good enough for shitty-looking Reversi and Solitaire, but not much else.
Then Windows became the gaming platform of choice. Sounds familiar?
Yes, it does sound familiar. Unfortunately, Windows was the upgrade path from DOS, and further, it would run virtually all DOS games if you booted it into DOS mode, so the comparison doesn't really hold as Windows was essentially guaranteed a strong user base.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Price: 4.99 Installs: 100,000-500,000
Price: 6.99 Installs: 100,000--500,000
I really don't have the patience to do this all day for you, AC, but at least do some research before you have your arguments blow up in your face.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
They have Sam 'SDL' Latinga on staff, and although I'm blocking on names a bunch of other big-name linux developers.
Honestly I'm more worried about what they WILL do to the linux platform rather than 'what this new failure' will do. They've got all the recipes for success and without that Draekar moron to ruin things (At least I hope so :D)
I see a decent amount of casual/indie mediocrity (the majority of which is already on Linux) and some major games from 2+ years ago. There are a lot more people using macs and they are willing to pay more for the same thing. If the mac crowd can't bring in decent games, Linux won't either.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
He's right for one reason... If you have a problem on a Mac... well you're not likely to have a problem on a mac... then again, you're stuck with what they allow you and your computer cost twice what an equivalent PC would. If you have a problem on a windows machine, it may take you a few minutes to a few hours to figure out. If you have problems in Linux? Oh fuck... And getting help from the community? Good luck there. I like linux, but someone needs to come up with a standardized distro for gaming, and have good support for the community. What I'm really hoping Valve is really doing is coming out with their own distro for gaming. With all the drivers, codecs, whatever else you need.
Pretty much every modern 3D engine in some way contains his work or is based on his work.
From 20 years ago. What has he done recently that has had any real effect?
I would. Step 1 is make a large size of games available for Linux (and make them easy to install; no CLI shit!).
There is no "Linux" in the sense that there is a Windows - how badly does that affect game distribution? I know Linux users are generally self-sufficient - they have to be - but which game maker wants to field the complaints when a buyer finds a game that refuses to work on Spanko or Plop or <insert obscure favourite distro here>?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
does his sales figures include the decade of games where you would download the linux binary off of their website and copy the data files off the windows retail copy? cause a whole generation of ID games allowed you to do just that.
A Linux game is going to be nothing but some program with some library depenencies.
A some version X of library foo is the same regardless of what Linux you are running just like it's irrelevant what random combinations of system and 3rd party libraries you've got installed on your Windows box.
At least Linux/Unix gives me a nice too to sort out what's missing.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
People who have some ethics when it comes to software. If I wanted to pirate software I would be running Windows.
My main platforms I use can be divided into Linux and Android and while I have not found software I would want to buy to run on Linux, there is a good deal available for Android which I can and do buy.
I would like to see at some point Android software running natively on my Linux desktop.
Android is after all a VM similar to java so why not? Linux users do not necessarily see a need to buy software because often that need is met by a free alternative. However where there isn't a free alternative and or a paid version that works well, then it will have a market.
Jellybean has one feature which i think is a mistake and that is locking down to a single device. I don't have a problem with buying software I do have a problem when I get told where and when I can use it.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
almost no one has a native linux client.
Mostly because of the crappy unstable driver support.
This is incidentally, the first thing valve is working to correct.
I am Linux only. I play [...] Skyrim...
I tried to run it on Linux...
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
[false strawman deleted]
> Who's left to sell to?
The people that keep on making the Indie Humble bundles as successful for Linux as they are MacOS.
If you want to paint Linux users as cheap or as theives then you are barking up the wrong tree. Clearly it's Windows users that are the biggest pirates and trying to claim any different is insane or retarded.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The big difference is that Windows actually was just capable of shitty-looking Reversi or Solitaire back in the day when DOS was still the primary PC gaming platform. DirectX changed that and it was only after the release of DirectX that gaming on Windows became viable.
Linux however has had gaming capabilities for a long time, but still there's a huge lack of compelling titles. The reason why gaming on Linux isn't taking of is because of politics, not a technical reason like with DOS/Windows.
But, with Windows, Microsoft had full control over what went into DirectX since it's a proprietary API and is capable of adding features whenever it feels the need. On the flipside, Linux has Open{x}L, which is usually a year behind in feature set (geometry shaders anyone?). Combine that with a relatively small user base and a prevailing belief that Windows is more user-friendly, and you have a recipe for failure in Linux adoption for gaming.
"Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two" -- RFC 1925
Peruse steam and look at the games for Mac and that will give you at least an idea of what can be expected for Linux.
Was that supposed to be an argument that Carmack is right or wrong?
The number of AAA games available on Steam on Mac is tiny in comparison to either Steam on Windows or any of the major consoles.
If this is going to work, then when Steam on Linux launches, there needs to be a wave of gamers who have been itching to move away from Windows waiting to jump on all the new and improved Linux gaming goodness. If it's just a trickle of Linux fans and a couple of curious not-quite-geeks, this will go nowhere and probably kill gaming on Linux forever, because no other company is ever going to invest in a serious Linux port if there proves to be no profitable market there.
Getting the kind of orders-of-magnitude shift required is going to need either a sensible range of big name titles in each major gaming genre or at least a couple of killer titles that aren't available on any other platform that will get the ball rolling and sustain it long enough for momentum to build, or preferably both. If Valve aren't actively working with several other major studios to promote this idea and get serious games other than their own ready to launch on day one, they've totally lost the plot. Hopefully they're working on a huge joint marketing effort with at least one major Linux distro, too.
On the other hand, if Valve are not only working the back channels to get serious games in the pipeline but also planning to throw everything they've got behind launching a dedicated Linux-based gaming console to cut out all the middle men, then a few execs at places like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft ought to be worried. It might be a spectacular failure, but Valve are big and powerful enough that they might just pull it off, and introducing a fourth credible console whose games can also be played on geeks' Linux boxes would be a substantial threat, effectively making them the Apple of the gaming world.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Also if that's true, then how come the highest average payment per player are linux users, for the humble bundle [humblebundle.com] as of now?
Because the people who bought the bundle on Linux are overpaying to send a message?
In other words there are a significant number of highly motivated Linux users ready to spend money.
Thanks for clearing that up.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
First of all, the Linux userbase is really small to begin with. Within that small userbase, you have two relatively large groups:
1. The ideologues, who really believe in RMS's idea that proprietary software is unethical. 2. The cheapskates, who aren't going to pay for software.
Who's left to sell to?
You know, every time there is a new Humble Bundle, sold on a pay-what-you-want scheme, it is always the Windows users that are the cheapest. Mac users fall in the middle, and Linux users shell out the most money on average.
Since those games are not Free, group 1 is out. That leaves group 2, which is demonstrably willing to pay more for software than their Windows- and Mac-using counterparts. But do go on calling them cheapskates.
Ignore this signature. By order.
He typed "GOD" in the console.
"Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two" -- RFC 1925
Yeah, that's true. But I would still use Steam on Windows because I like Valve's atittude toward their customers. Valve is the only company which has pledged that they will support migrating the software you've purchased off their platform if they ever go under. I also like the fact that they have vision, which is something that's sorely lacking in the industry. Many other publishers have hack solutions for downloading games, and I choose not to use those because they can't even figure out how to integrate their own games into their service.
EA's origin system is a perfect example. It sucks, and half the time when I start up older EA games and log in it still won't authenticate my DLC. Simply put, it's buggy crap. Valve has a history of putting together competently built software for all of the platforms they support, so I'm pretty confident that they'll do Linux gaming very well even if nobody has succeeded before. This is mainly because Valve knows what "well" looks like.
Me. I am a professional that uses Linux on my desktop exclusively.
As an employed person, I spend money on games, and have bought games for linux in the past.
If Valve can make more games work on my desktop, and make the process of getting said games to my desktop, they deserve my money.
Evert Vorster.
I don't do gaming beyond solitaire, but I'm assuming that the biggest obstacle to getting serious games happening on Linux is video drivers and related stuff. This based on seemingly endless forum posts grumbling about how badly video makers support Linux.
Seems to me that if Valve is serious about this we could see a big push to build good, solid, fully featured Linux drivers for most common (gaming-capable) video cards. That presumable would mean drivers aimed specifically at Ubuntu, but still should be overall a very good thing.
Ubuntu was the first distro (after regular attempts over many years) that actually just installed and ran on my PC with no mucking about. I've since moved on to Mint, but the point is that I haven't looked back. With Libre Office and a few other essentials reaching maturity there is now literally one program that still forces me to boot back to Windows.
I think that Valve could bring along a big chunk of the gaming community - how about a downloadable Valve specific Ubuntu variant that would just install and work, and give new users a base to install and run games?
Three Squirrels
What happened to all the speculation that Valve/Steam was going to launch their own console, based on a bunch of hardware job postings they had some time ago? I think this Linux strategy probably shoehorns in perfectly if they were going to release a high-end barebones Linux console to run Steam for Linux.
Steam basically owns the PC gaming online distribution market right now. It seems prudent for them to take the next step and come out with their own platform so that people who want a "Steam box" don't have to give a cut to Microsoft and Apple as well. Probably makes it all the more expedient since Windows 8 will also launch with its own competing marketplace.
And even if Linux gamers don't bring in the money, perhaps they expect the more technical Linux gamers to contribute more in the way of game mods and content. Valve/Steam already has decent support for running Linux servers for many of their games, and have shown an affinity for letting indie and user-generated content and gameplay to take off on its own.
Maybe they should just bundle the shared libraries like they do it on Windows.
'nuff said
Not even close. Please regale us on how Loki's efforts in the 90's of porting AAA title months after everyone has played them on Windows and just throwing it out there for the typical Linux user to do their best installing them on their distro of choice in any way compares to the encompasing effort Valve is doing with Steam including working with proprietary vendors to get better drivers and actually tweaking the Source engine to run better on Linux rather than just porting other stuff after the fact. Please do as I would love to drive a truck through all the holes in your argment.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
A market that likes to overpay is a good market to be in :) There's a question about how long that tendency will last, but it's been going strong for over 3 years so far and doesn't appear to be slowing yet. It possibly won't until games are so commonplace on that platform that users no longer feel the need to encourage growth, but at that stage you will probably no longer have your problem of a limited userbase.
It was my understanding that the Windows Store will only allowed Metro apps. While you can advertise desktop apps in the store, the most you can do is have your advertisement link to your own website where you actually sell your desktop application.
Assuming Microsoft hasn't changed this, there is no benefit for most PC style games to still not use Steam since you still need someone to distribute your digital copy and Windows Store will only distribute Metro apps.
What message? "We've got money and are willing to give it to you in exchange for things we want."? I think that's a message game companies should listen to!
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
What happened to all the speculation that Valve/Steam was going to launch their own console,
Valve Software has confirmed on their corporate blog that they are bringing Steam to Linux. They have not alluded to any consoles that may or may not be in development. Do they have a customized Linux distro running on some optimized x86 hardware that you could possibly call a console? Almost certainly. Who knows if that in any form will ever see the light of day but I certainly hope so.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
In the beginning id sold games, but since Quake they've sold tech demos that advertised their game engines for other's to purchase. Having an engine have a fun game wrapped around it was just more money.
I'm a long time Linux user and don't see myself in either group.. I'm also a bit puzzled about point 1. and how it applies as a negative in this case.. Are you saying that there is a group of users who find it unethical that there is software that only runs on a proprietary OS ? .. It would seem that those people would applaud software coming to multiple platforms.. As to point 2. There are cheapskates in the Windows platform that don't want to pay for software either.. virus makers love those people..
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/11/22/
Good-bye
Yeah but that took the better part of a decade and a half.
No, the transition of DOS to Windows went surprisingly quick. You just have to know when to start counting.
Before Windows 95, Windows was not really considered a full operating system by Microsoft or its users, but merely a GUI to run applications on top of DOS. This was nice for productivity apps or file management, but no gamer was interested in any of that. Most users were very aware of the fact Windows was running on top of DOS as most of them didn't even start Windows by default, but only launched it when needed. Windows didn't facilitate gaming in any way, but there was also no need as everyone was completely fine with running games straight from DOS with which they were already familiar with.
When Windows 95 came out, things changed as it was no longer possible to boot up to DOS and launch Windows later, as it was common with prior versions of Windows. So only when the GUI became the default environment, the need started to arise for games to run on the Windows platform instead of relying on DOS. The problem with this was however that Windows 95 didn't allow programs direct access to the hardware, which caused problems with achieving the required performance to run games properly. Microsoft actually saw this problem coming (oh how the times have changed) and started working on DirectX to solve this in 1994. By the end of 1995 (the year Windows 95 was released) the first version of DirectX became available to the public.
Just a year later in 1996 the first batch of "real" games became available which made use of this new technology (C&C: Red Alert and Diablo to name a few come to mind). In 1997 a huge amount of PC games were making use of DirectX to run directly in Windows (Age of Empires, Tomb Raider 2, Quake II, Dungeon Keeper etc. etc.). In 1998 the amount of games released for MS-DOS was close to zero.
All in all the transition from DOS to DirectX was one of the biggest leaps in PC gaming technology. And the entire operation was basically completed in under three years. It's one of the bigger success stories of the industry and certainly not something to talk down.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
>>>I remember a time when people used to say DOS is the gaming platform of choice.
Not anyone I ever met except those who were unfortunate enough to be stuck with 16-color PCs that went "beep". The true gaming platforms of the 80s and early 90s were:
Atari 800
Commodore 64
Commodore Amiga -or- Atari ST
- These machines blew-away anything the PCs of the day could do. Of course nowadays there's very little difference in graphics or sound, so people just pick the defacto standard (the OS that has 88% desktop penetration).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
And how long as Linux been around? It's turning 21 this year, if you consider the very first release. Consider that Windows has been around 6 years longer than Linux. Then, consider that Linux was essentially Linus Torvalds' personal toy until they late 90's, say 1997, and count from there. A decade and a half later, here we are; what might happen?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
First of all, the Linux userbase is really small to begin with. Within that small userbase, you have two relatively large groups:
1. The ideologues, who really believe in RMS's idea that proprietary software is unethical.
2. The cheapskates, who aren't going to pay for software.
Who's left to sell to?
Humble bundle says
$359,168.37Total payments:
43,415Purchases #:
$8.27Average purchase:
$7.44 Average Windows:
$9.80 Average Mac:
$11.92 Average Linux:
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Yes, uh, it's called WIndows 8 with a Microsoft marketplace where you can download games and they can probably get even better deals than Steam can since they are...Microsoft and issue the software licenses. Steam has no control over this. They will fade out quickly, but for those thinking Valve is embracing Linux because they love open source...FALSE. They are embracing Linux because their very business depends upon Steam.
In what universe is this? Publishers are interested in any marketplace they can sell things on, as long as it's successful...Windows will have the marketplace built in. What do you think people's default is going to be?
3. The people who will buy the Steam console.
I doubt Linux gaming will make it suddenly take over the desktop (people are more likely to migrate from Windows 8 to a Mac) but it gives him the opportunity to create a dedicated console with steam on it. People might buy that, especially if its a computing platform as well (like the old computers of my youth).
Linux is a perfectly viable gaming market, if the major studios would take Microsoft's dick out their mouths long enough to develop for it...
Macs have more games now...but most gamers still use a PC. So, not entirely a great assessment.
It's still going to be on every PC sold until the next version comes out whether you like it or not. People have to go out of their way to find out about and download Steam.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
It was my understanding that the Windows Store will only allowed Metro apps. While you can advertise desktop apps in the store, the most you can do is have your advertisement link to your own website where you actually sell your desktop application.
Assuming Microsoft hasn't changed this, there is no benefit for most PC style games to still not use Steam since you still need someone to distribute your digital copy and Windows Store will only distribute Metro apps.
True but at least conceptually that is one small step away from what Steam does so I can see how the content platform purveyors like Valve might be getting nervous. What you might be missing is that, yes, for the game makers Steam is still the obvious choice but if consumer demand is high enough then all the games will also be distributable through the Windows app store one way or the other which is in direct competition with Steam. As the Windows App store will be installed on every Windows 8 device and will be marketed heavily it is a virtual certainty that some consumers that either would have gone to steam or are already steam users will migrate their purchasing to the app store and it will probably have a snowball effect where more users means more games etc. MS already has content delivery chops via Xbox Live and it is through Xbox Live that they make money on their console. I seriously doubt the opportunity for recreating this situation on Windows is lost on Microsoft or Valve. This will not happen in one month or probably during the Windows 8 timespan but all the pieces are being put into place and if MS decided to drop the hammer on Windows 9 or 10 and require all traditional desktop apps to go through the app store with no easy way of sideloading like on Android then Valve at least in its present guise is done. Apparently Gabe isn't taking that prospect lying down and I don't blame him.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
All they need to do is test the product against the 5 distros or so that comprise 90% of Linux Desktop usage. Much like for Windows. My gut feeling is that not many post-2010 Windows games work under Windows 98, for example.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Enough with the personal attacks on Carmack. He's not the issue, the marketplace is. 15 years after it first appeared, desktop Linux has shown no sign of grabbing more than a tiny fraction of the market. Catering to that tiny fraction is not a sound business model, for game companies or anybody else.
Why is there no Gametree Linux? These companies were around before Steam for Mac.
The Gametree question, that's the elephant in the corner here.
You aren't looking hard enough.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Gimme a large selection of games that will play with out Wine
Why do they have to run without Wine, as opposed to running correctly with Wine? A game developer could test a product thoroughly on Wine, treating it as a first-class citizen among supported Windows versions like XP, Vista, and 7. That would make Wine just another toolkit for making a GNU/Linux app, not unlike GTK+ or Qt, except using a different executable format (PE instead of ELF). It's not like Wine is an emulator or anything.
and I`ll buy the kids some Linux compatible computer games.
I'll keep that in mind. You mentioned "kids" plural; if a game that works on GNU/Linux is best played with two gamepads and a TV or other large (20"+) monitor as opposed to two separate PCs in separate rooms, are you still willing to buy?
A game is far easier to move into WinRT compared to a desktop app using a window-based GUI with GDI for drawing. You get access to a fullscreen surface and you can manipulate that surface using DirectX. I wouldn't find a Windows 8-style requirement as much of a problem for a lot of titles. It will probably start off with touch-based titles similar to what you find for iOS and Android, but if that succeeds, I think you will see a lot of more "serious" desktop games ported over.
Yeah, this from the guy who thinks streaming a 1,073,741,824^2 pixel texture of the entire game world into RAM is a good idea. Put down the pipe, turn around and walk backwards toward the sound of my voice.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
Because anecdotally I hear lots of Linux users that are chomping at the bit for Steam to to come and looking forward to paying for games
"Anecdotally?"
What makes what you hear any better evidence than his?
Furthermore, the Humble Indie Bundle has shown that there are gamers on Linux that will pay
80% to 90% off retail list for the bundle.
The return on the HB is about $8 from the Windows gamer. 3/4 of the total.
For games which have seen have broad exposure and frequent discounts on the Windows platform.
$12 from the Linux gamer. 1/8 of the total.
The return from the HB is split among charities, developers, and Humble Bundle itself.
Linux users always have the highest average and a leaderboard of top contributors. The leaderboard has regulars, too, like Minecraft developer notch, and the "HumbleBrony Bundle" (a group that does a collective fundraising effort within the Brony community), both of whom contribute to the tune of thousands.
Latest Humble Bundle Of Pay-What-You-Want Indie Games Raises $1-Million In Five Hours
The problem with big ticket donations is that they projects Linux sales through a rose tinted lens. Things look better than they rare.
I can't imagine (2) being significant at all, as most Linux users will have a Windows license that they got with the computer (or a previous, retired computer). There is another option for being a "cheapskate", because Linux and other open OSes allow you to do more with the HW than in Windows. I would argue that I'm not a cheapskate for running "ZFS on Linux" instead of buying a proprietary storage solution from Oracle for my home, but I suppose there are proprietary alternatives for most of the things that Linux gives you for free.
Huh? Why was it not a viable market? Millions of people buying smart phones so they could browse the web, share pictures of their cats, check their email, tweet, geocache, listen to music, and even make the odd phone call, and you think that it's all driven by a desire to play angry birds?
People would be buying smart phones even if there were no games at all. But nobody's been buying Linux-based PCs.
I was thinking this was the elephant in the room myself. As far as I know, native binaries are allowed into the "Metro" app store so what's stopping any of the game sellers from just packaging up their games and submitting them in their entirety to the Windows app store. This has major implications for Steam on x86. And if devs start cross compiling for ARM and x86 that's even worse as Steam will never show up in its current guise on a WinRT device. Gabe is doing what it takes to see his oxygen doesn't get cut off and I would imagine he is pretty committed to the idea.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Having only looked at the APIs and not used them, it looks like there is no major barrier to taking an existing desktop DirectX game and wrapping it in WinRT. It actually looks like all you would have to do it change the windowing code a bit. Basically the kind of thing that would take a competent developer a couple weeks worth of work for a large game. Compare that to having to rewrite your renderer, windowing system, networking, sound, input and probably more so it will run on Linux.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
This is assuming that Windows Marketplace will offer:
- Deep 50%-75% sales
- Automatic updating/patching of games
- Cloud-based per-application file backup
- Integrated social and communications tools
- Integrated unobtrusive DRM
- Integrated achievement (or similar) tracking
- Integration with MetaCritic, etc.
- Per-product forums
- Et cetera
Pretty tall order for an app store supposedly for general merchandise, no?
I'm right there with you and as far as being a "cheapskate" is concerned I'm a Linux user and would gladly pay double the price for Linux over Windows as really, price isn't the issue. The functionality I get is. If I want to run a Windows program, I have a vm for that and the only thing that doesn't work on is games. When Steam comes to Linux, that won't be a problem anymore as I'll just play what is in there. If a publisher's game isn't in Steam or available for Linux then, oh well, I guess I won't be buying your game.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
uhh....it was most certainly not his "personal toy" until 1997. RedHat came out in 1993, I was using it for an ISP I owned 93-95, and many many other people were doing lots and lots of things with it. It stopped being his "personal toy" early 1993.
Once you've got the games to run on steam on Linux, then it's almost certain that someone will try to produce a Linux based console. It looks like there's some attempts to get an Android based console going and I think it's inevitable that there'll be a flood of devices copying/improving consoles as the hardware's cheap and getting cheaper.
At some point, TV manufacturers will probably include some simple console hardware into their TVs if they think enough people will pay for it (similar to Internet TVs).
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Why would this be such a tall order? Everything on your list Microsoft already does with Xbox Live.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
If the FPS is better, the Windows-gamers will come...
Especially if the OS is free.
Marginal improvements in frame rate visible only on very high end systems is no big deal.
But comparing DX 9 level graphics with mainstream DX 11 gamer-graphics card performance just might be considered a tad misleading.
No one but the geek gives a damn about "free."
By the time product reaches retail shelves the OEM price of the OS is irrelevant.
Forging new markets it ALL ABOUT RISK.
Then the only company that can save us is Hasbro.
You do realize I was posting in support of Linux, right? Yes, I'm aware of RedHat; are you aware that RedHat was a server distro for several years before it became what most would consider an enterprise distro? an enterprise distro is a sort of hybrid between a server and desktop distro. It was Linus' personal toy until desktop distros became well known and useable; yes, it was used as a server OS by many during that timeframe, but for anyone not running a server, it wasn't very useful.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
A better supply of games in Linux would lead more gamers to run Linux. More gamers running Linux will make the platform more attractive to developers. This would lead to more games in Linux, which would lead to more gamers running Linux, etc. This will also lead to improvements in Linux distributions for gaming, in terms of built-in features and hardware support, making the platform more attractive to developers and gamers, and so forth.
It's just a question of where the tipping point is. This move by Valve is a big push in the right direction.
Carmack might be right that for most games, producing a Linux version would cost more than it brings in, but in the long term an investment in making Linux a viable platform could increase future profits and promote brand loyalty toward the companies that had the foresight to pioneer. I think Apple has shown us that you just can't overinvest in "coolness". And the cost-benefit problem probably doesn't hold true for less technically ambitious games, which can achieve Linux compatibility for minimal cost if their code is reasonably well structured and segregates the platform-specific bits.
Learn Japanese RPG -- lrnj.com
And, no, RedHat did not come out in 1993.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
So, you think somebody should spend a huge amount of money to port games to Linux because they might create a new gaming marketplace? What's their incentive for risking their dough?
The incentive is that once the rumored Linux-based set-top gaming computer comes out, Valve won't have to pay royalties to Microsoft and Sony anymore. Instead, it'll be collecting those royalties from indie game developers that got shafted by the big three console makers.
They have Sam 'SDL' Latinga on staff, and although I'm blocking on names a bunch of other big-name linux developers.
Honestly I'm more worried about what they WILL do to the linux platform rather than 'what this new failure' will do. They've got all the recipes for success and without that Draekar moron to ruin things (At least I hope so :D)
Glad to see someone supporting SDL.
for me to see my childhood hero throw FUD about market viability for my platform. John Carmack was once an open minded individual who cared about technical feats and versatility in the engine (read some of his former .plan files about comments to the portability of the OpenGL API and his efforts to port to other ISAs). This is the same man who once witnessed the leak of the quake source code, saw that a user had submitted fixes and made it compile for Linux, and then later went on to publish that user's same work as the official Id copy.
John Carmack used to be a man of principle and not cater to tempestuous marketing. With all of his influence now he says this garbage that has the potential to destroy the momentum that Valve has been generating toward a formerly unsuccessful effort? Developing games for Linux, even if it isn't a marketable success it will be a technical success and a step forward for games. When software development firms can work this closely with hardware developers and inspect EVERY piece of the stack games have the potential for more efficient hardware utilization and smoother effects.
Yeah, there are no games for Linux because nobody uses Linux and nobody uses Linux because there are no games.
The sad thing is that Wine is somewhat of a solution for the "my games don't run on Linux" problem, but it's also the reason the number of games created for Linux is actually lowered, because a lot of the developers are simply writing for Windows and relying on Wine for Linux support.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
But why are "Those who write their own software" specifically using GNU/Linux? How is writing one's own software any harder or more expensive on Windows or Mac OS X than on GNU/Linux? Windows has Visual Studio Express, Code::Blocks, and Eclipse, and Mac OS X has Xcode and Eclipse.
PC gamers use PCs because they can upgrade hardware components easily. Macs have always been "black boxes" for the most part, have focused on proprietary hardware, and have generally approached gaming as a secondary priority, if a priority at all. Linux, however, will run on a PC, and supports a wider range of gaming-oriented hardware than Apple OSs ever have.
People don't buy Macs for gaming; they own Macs and then want to play a particular game. To make the switch, they have to spend more money (to get a copy of Bootcamp and Windows, for example). People who own PCs run either Windows or Linux; to switch from Windows to Linux is free. If you only run Windows to play games, you can dump Windows and run Steam in Linux without incurring any additional cost. Not so with Mac. So, comparing the Mac market to a potential Linux market is apples and oranges, really.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
Not anyone I ever met except those who were unfortunate enough to be stuck with 16-color PCs that went "beep".
The modular design of the PC meant that improvements in graphics and sound would eventually out-pace even the best of the systems whose tech was frozen in amber.
Games like King's Quest demonstrated the raw horsepower of the 16 bit IBM PC.
No hardware supported sprite animation?
No problem.
What would make Steam irrelevant? Just curious?
So there is a market for *Linux* apps and games.
But is there a market for Linux apps and games that use input devices other than a flat touch screen and an accelerometer? For example, is there a market for Android apps and games that need a Bluetooth keyboard or a $62 Bluetooth iControlPad for best results? I don't see how a platformer, for example, would work well on a touch-only device because the player wouldn't be able to tell where his thumbs are relative to the on-screen gamepad.
That's one of the things he talks about is that a lot of the Linux on the desktop types are "Only OSS!" and "I shouldn't ever have to pay for software!" Well, that doesn't work for commercial game developers. They need people who are willing and interested in paying for their product.
The combination of the smaller market and the part of the market disinterested in paying for software makes it not as likely you make a profit.
Also when it comes to high end 3D games, the cost of porting and supporting can be significant particularly since the 3D situation on Linux is a bit of a mess. Talk to Mozilla about the problems they encountered with getting Firefox's hardware acceleration for Linux. With the binary nVidia drivers, it was no problems. With others, there were serious issues, like "X crashes," issues.
None of that is stuff that can't be dealt with, of course, but the more work you have to do on the port, the most money it costs, and the more sales you need to make it worth while. If a Linux port were as simple as "click a button and spend 10 man hours testing," sure it would be worth it. Sell even 100 more copies and you've done well. However if it takes a few thousand man hours in work, and probably hiring a person or two that specialize in it, then you can need a substantial number of sales to make it worth while and the market just doesn't seem to be there.
most Linux users will have a Windows license that they got with the computer (or a previous, retired computer).
A Windows license that comes with a retired name-brand computer is an OEM license, and unlike a retail license, an OEM license can't be transferred from "a previous, retired computer" to a new computer.
Because anecdotally I hear lots of Linux users that are chomping at the bit for Steam to to come and looking forward to paying for games
"Anecdotally?"
What makes what you hear any better evidence than his?
If we just took it on face value as anecdote vs. anecdote then the validity might be equal. Fortunately, we can examine the statements themselves critically. When someone tries to bisect 20,000,000 (at least) people into 2 different groups both groups being characterized as having extreme viewpoints (cheapskates vs. zealots) with no room for a moderate third group, that flies in the face of common sense and is almost certainly false. I didn't explore that fact in my response as I didn't think it was necessary. What I did say was that there are a lot of Linux users chomping at the bit for Steam and will buy games. This is a reasonable assertion as we know there are millions and millions of Linux users and a certain percentage of any portion of the population enjoys games. So it is reasonable to assume that there are Linux users that will buy games as a certain percentage of people that run Linux will download Steam and will actually follow through and buy. Valve is certainly aware of how many people use Steam on Linux via Wine and it is possible they have already crunched the numbers and see profit in if nothing else giving those users a better experience. In a baseline psychological profile a better experience generally translates into better sales so that is a reasonable expectation.
80% to 90% off retail list for the bundle.
More than that if you factor in how little someone could pay should they choose to. What you are missing is that even the HIB suffers from a few faults. Lack of AAA titles, not a part of a distribution platform like Steam therefore necessitating more friction for the user between clicking "buy" and actually playing. You also fail to take into account that Valve isn't just bringing Steam over, they are also working with hardware vendors and presumably software houses like Canonical to ensure that Steam is a stellar experience on Linux. All of that is a level of service that the HIB cannot bring to the table and is a level that no Linux game vendor has brought to the table ever. So the HIB is just a minimal guideline not the entire picture. The point of bringing it up was to counter the troll that Linux users won't buy games. HIB wasn't intended to be a model for how the Steam efforts are expected to play out and it is disingenuous for you to pretend I meant it that way.
The return on the HB is about $8 from the Windows gamer. 3/4 of the total.
This in no way conflicts with my point that Linux users will pay for games. Furthermore, I am puzzled why you bother to bring it up as I didn't even mention that Linux users paid more for the HIB though thank you for doing that as it is at least prima facie an important point. There has been a lot of electronic ink spilled and hand wringing over the simple data point that Linux gamers voluntarily pay more than Windows people for the HIB and I am inclined to believe that it is at least in part because they are just happy to be able to pay anything at all for decent games and get caught up in the moment. That's neither here nor there as far as my main point which is that Linux users indeed will pay for games and anyone who disputes that is ignoring reality.
The problem with big ticket donations is that they projects Linux sales through a rose tinted lens. Things look better than they rare.
Yes, it is a fallacy to extrapolate overall interest in games and chances of success on Linux based on something like the HIB as that is barely above arguing by analogy and devolves into trench warfare between Linux and Windows people. I notice you are really gnawing on that bone yourself though as it seems to give you a safe place to argue from. Your problem is there aren't a
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
I would like to see at some point Android software running natively on my Linux desktop.
Android is after all a VM similar to java so why not?
Because a lot of Android games are made for the NDK, which allows reuse of an existing C++ game engine from the Windows, Mac, or iOS version of a game. Porting using the NDK is a lot faster than porting through an error-prone line-by-line rewrite into Java. The trouble with NDK is that applications have to be recompiled for each instruction set, and most are compiled for ARM and not x86 because the vast majority of Android certified devices have an ARM CPU.
This is delusional. How many people have played Snake on a Nokia?
-]Phreak Out[-
Most of the Linux developers consist of those people, for good reason. The "ideologues" are the only reason Linux exists in the first place; people willing to work for free for the greater good built every major component of it, from the kernel to the lowly little desktop applications. Yeah, demonize them when they're suspicious of corporate powergrabs of their work. Not sure why people think that looks intelligent.
The "cheapskates" are mostly part of the first group. I am not about to give money to corporations which are actively attempting to strip me of what little rights I have left; that goes for Microsoft and major game companies pretty heavily. Unfortunately, that leaves little to spend money on these days.
It doesn't really matter what the developers think, though. They are only a large part of the user base because Linux is not very mainstream. Compare the ratio of programmers and inept users on Windows to those on Linux.
Great Intellect...
Peruse steam and look at the games for Mac and that will give you at least an idea of what can be expected for Linux.
that's exactly the problem: the mac users (and I am one of them) had exactly the same hopes for Steam on mac as the Linux users have for Steam on Linux - and what did they get? a very small catalog of games many of whom are crappy Cedega/Cider "ports" (might just as well run the Windows version using Wine) or run in Dosbox.
OS X didn't become the "first-class citizen" in the gaming world everybody had hoped for and the few AAA titles that get released for Mac would have been available even without Steam (e.g. Civ V).
If that's how Steam for Linux will play out then nothing substantial will change for gaming on Linux as you will only get "ports" of all the games that run via Wine anyways and these "official" ports will often have worse performance than on vanilla Wine (due to Cider having been forked from Wine in 2002 and not being able to include any recent improvements from the LGPL Wine versions due to licensing)
Internet Explorer.
signature is pants
Carmack is right. I bought a Radeon 6850 when it came out, and then came the joy of discovering the Linux drivers at the time sucked. Solutions online? Write you own drivers. Yeah....I'll get right on that..... It's not quite as easy as simply porting the games over to Linux. There's quite a few things in total holding back true gaming excellence from Linux.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Also bear in mind the relative ease of porting between OS X and Linux (kind of like porting between iOS and Android) ...
Be very careful here. Most applications written for iOS are written in Objective-C, while most applications written for Android are written in Java. Yes, they share very similar underlying design philosophies, and some of the same underlying tech (OpenGL, posix), but porting can still be very difficult. Compiling Objective-C for Android would be a nightmare, and converting Java bytecode into something compiled for iOS is similarly hard, and that's after you write an API compatibility layer.
Mobile programs are only easy to port if they were written from the beginning with porting in mind, either by using an intermediate API and langage (like MonoTouch), or by writing everything in C and keeping the Objective-C/Java parts to a minimum. Unless this was planned, most people don't go this route, and porting those programs would be more appropriately called "rewriting".
The situation between OSX and Linux is similar (though not quite as bad). Porting from Linux to OSX is easy, because most Linux programs are written in languages also available on OSX. However, OSX to Linux is hard because, again, most OSX apps are written in Objective-C. You can compile Objective-C on Linux, and a lot of OSX APIs are re-implemented by the GNUStep project, but GNUStep is missing proper support for some language features that are heavily used in OSX. Which means that native OSX apps that were not written with porting in mind become extremely hard to port.
The good news in the specific case of Steam for Linux is that almost anything available on Steam for OSX is also on Windows, which means it has already been ported, and porting to Linux shouldn't be that hard. So yes, this statement is correct in this specific case, but your comparison isn't and "it's easy to port from OSX to Linux" is an extremely common misconception.
I'm an MBA (hold off on the throwing of the rotten vegetables! I'm a IT person too!) So I'd like to put my 2 cents worth on the whole thing from a business perspective.
Everyone's talking about it being a chicken and egg situation where devs aren't making games for Linux because there's no market, and there's no market because there aren't any games. This isn't really the situation. The execs at big companies often deal with situations where they have to take a leap of faith. Every time there's a new console, for example, the execs at companies like EA decide whether or not to make games for it well before the console is released, so they're making games for a market with 0 users! They make the decisions based on a few key factors, including looking at the risks, the chances of success, and the possible rewards given the market. Here are just some aspects that are probably discouraging to an exec at a big gaming company:
1. History. Linux is old. Really old. And it hasn't taken off in the consumer market yet. So it's a pretty big leap for an EA exec to think it's going to get popular now. There hasn't really been any change in the market that would point to a massive upswing in Linux gaming.
2. High potential risks. Xbox isn't that big a risk to support, since it uses similar tech to Windows. Linux? It's a bit different. Sure, it uses OpenGL, like a mac, but it's a whole different platform. This wouldn't be a deal killer by itself, but it's another nail in the coffin since it increases the risks.
3. Lack of proof of a market. As people have pointed out, the Humble Bundles sold well, but they had people giving to them because a. They wanted to support small indie developers and b. they wanted to support the charities that the Humble Bundles give to. When companies look to predict what's going to happen they look for comparability, that is, they try to find similar situations where there was a success, and there is very little evidence for this. Should they take a chance anyway, and do something new? That leads us to the last and perhaps biggest point:
4. Low first mover advantage. One of the things a business looks for is first mover advantage, that is, what kind of benefits do they get by taking the risk of being the first to do something. What they're looking for is some reason to think that going first will let them get and HOLD ON TO a chunk of the market. This isn't the case with Linux. Let's say that Carmack decides to make his latest game (Quake 7, this time it's even Quakier!) in Linux. Let's be generous and say that Q7 is released, the Linux gaming market explodes, and everyone buys Q7 for Linux. Carmack took a big risk. What did he get in return? Well, he got big profits, obviously. But he didn't do as well from this deal as you'd think: Let's say that Blizzard, after seeing Q7's success, produces a first-person Linux game called Starcraft 3D: Raynor on a Plane. Assuming it's of a similar quality to Q7, their profits are about the same. Maybe even better, since the market has now grown even more. But they didn't have to take the risks that Carmack did: they lost nothing by waiting until Linux was already a success. And unlike with a console Linux doesn't have a short life cycle, so they had all the time in the world to wait. It's true that Q7 had the advantage of being the only game in town, but that advantage won't last long. Therefore, there's nothing to be gained by being the company that takes a chance on Linux. Sad but true.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that most of the discussion on Linux's chances of success revolve around its worthiness as a platform, but a good platform isn't enough. There has to be a strategy to attract gaming business, and Linux doesn't really have one that works. Steam's support is nice, but in the long run it just isn't enough given the risks that an EA or iD would have to take as things are.
a) closing off installation of all binaries on Windows except through the app store
b) beefing up the Windows 8 app store to being a full fledged AAA title platform a la Xbox Live
c) Making it trivial to cross compile AAA titles to WinRT ARM tablets
then Steam faces the potential of becoming completely irrelevant through either complete exclusion from the platform or having to compete directly with MS themselves in the same space but with MS having the advantage of owning the underlying platform.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Be very careful here. Most applications written for iOS are written in Objective-C, while most applications written for Android are written in Java.
Yes, you're right. I should have mentioned that I was specifically talking about games written in C/C++ and making opengl calls.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
The few Windows game developers I knew back then used WinG even after DirectX came out (FYI, I was mostly a mac developer at the time, but I got pissed at Apple for not continuing mid-priced towers and moved to Windows circa 2003). Even after Microsoft killed it, they feared Microsoft would do the same with the Direct APIs and were hesitant to move to them. I don't think any of them even used DirectX until it hit 8 because prior to 8 it was viewed as a buggier/inferior API, but that also may be due to game cycle time (the indie company I'm referring to had a 3+ year cycle). Anyhow, I'm rambling - my point is only a few studios took the initial plunge, and when they did it was sometimes half-baked. For instance, Carmack himself thought Direct3D was a disaster until 7 or 8.
As for games, I see it different - there is a total lack of Linux exclusive or OpenGL exclusive games in the market (except a few tied to a platform like Apple or PS3). If you get a few of those, even if they eventually get ported to Windows later, you can build momentum for a platform. Until that happens, gamers will not feel a need to move. This is exactly how Windows became dominant in the first place, and why iPad/iPhone was getting games first and then they are ported to Android and Apple was ahead in the market (it has since sorta reversed, but Apple did this once before with the Apple ][ so we should expect that by now).
- Deep 50%-75% sales
Prices are set by the publisher. This already happens on the Windows Phone marketplace though.
- Automatic updating/patching of games
Already there.
- Cloud-based per-application file backup
Up to the developer to implement and is about as hard to do as it is on Steam.
- Integrated social and communications tools
Already there.
- Integrated unobtrusive DRM
Already there.
- Integrated achievement (or similar) tracking
Already there.
- Integration with MetaCritic, etc.
Built in ratings are already there.
- Per-product forums
Is that a serious requirements for you or are you just grasping for ideas now?
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
Rage was indeed a half-assed game, as are most recent iD games. Good code, terrible design. That doesn't mean the man isn't intelligent or insightful. It just means he's a terrible gameplay designer. He knows the fuck out of the technology side of it, he's a nuts and bolts kind of guy, and that's why his opinion matters here.
If he were bitching about how Call of Duty has a crappy UI, well then he'd be talking out of his ass. Just like you are.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Beyond that...
Look at things like the "Humble Bundles"
From the stats, it seems that Linux users consistently pay a higher price (by choice).
For myself, I'd be willing to pay an extra 10% or so (more or less depending on the actual software) to support having Linux versions of the software I like/use/want.
Carmack's relevance is not overinflated. He is a brilliant programmer. He's just not a designer. That used to be Romero's job, back in the glory days. Romero would put out the cool ideas, and Carmack would bring them to reality.
A lot of programmers are like that. You can be a technical genius, a creative genius, or somewhere in between. You can even oscillate between the two poles, but I've never heard of anyone being a creative technical genius. They are fundamentally contrasting modes of thought.
Give the man a great, fleshed-out concept and he will turn it into a top-tier game. He has a gift for tackling complex, multi-faceted problems that seem insurmountable. He just needs someone to provide those challenges, otherwise he will continue to churn out the same tired old crap.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Wait, so you're expecting the Mac repertoire to be available for Linux before Linux even proves itself as viable market?
No, not at all. I'm expecting Linux to prove a viable market for the intrepid publishers that start with it and then I expect the titles that run on the Mac to be ported over. But that wasn't the point of what I said. The AC above based his argument on only L4D2 and Portal coming to Linux so I just pointed out that there is precedent for games other than those being ported (at least on the Mac). The bottom line was that, of course, more than those two titles will come over and the situation on the Mac while not directly supporting my contention at least gives a model of what might be expected.
And what relative ease of porting from OSX to Linux? Where's Linux's analogue to CoreAudio, CoreVideo and the other CoreFrameworks? Where's the analogue to the Cocoa framework? The only thing the two systems have in common is OpenGL, Almost everything needs to be rewritten.
By "relative" I meant relative to porting DirectX games from Windows. Porting a directx game from Windows involves all you mentioned above and additionally the added issue of moving from DX to Opengl. So, 'relatively' speaking, it is easier to go from OSX to Linux than from Windows to Linux at least with respect to DX based games.
CoreAudio
OpenAL which CoreAudio contains an implementation of.
CoreVideo
Not sure how this is very important in the game space. Care to elaborate?
other core frameworks
Most of which are confined to the space of accelerating the user interface so not particularly relevant to the kind of games found on Steam.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
I disagree that you're defending Linux. You're pretending that the date of release matters in a discussion about gaming platforms - it doesn't, not at this point. Linux wasn't intended for mainstream desktop use for many years, so it's largely irrelevant what year it originally came out. That it is used as a primary desktop platform by millions now is the important bit. What year did that start? Meh, dunno. Haven't tended to worry about what others are using for their desktop OS. But it has at least been long enough for it to not be an excuse anymore - XP isn't the same as Win7, after all - and widespread linux desktop use was already starting prior to XP release.
Modern gamers aren't anything like that. Sure, they will buy the latest GPU and run the vendor-supplied overclocking tool, but that's about the extent of it.
The vast majority of gamers, the "butter zone" as far as marketing and profits are concerned, are not tweakers. They know how to double-click an icon, type in their password and right-click things until they die, but ask too much of them and they will flee to the nearest PS3 or X360. If Linux gaming catches on, these people will run Ubuntu. Even better: they will run a spinoff of Ubuntu that asks even less questions.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Not just an attempt, Ouya got way more than enough money to make itself happen. Unless the team for it wildly miscalculated.
a) Suicide
b) The number of people who mistrust MS + the number of people who love Valve + the fact that MS probably won't have nearly the depth and breadth of sales means this isn't likely to make a significant dent in Steam
c) This may help with the casual market, but it would only really be a problem if Steam was going after tablets. Otherwise it shouldn't have any effect on Steam
The App Store is not a threat to Steam and won't be for some time, if ever.
They haven't built it yet, but I'm sure they will as they've certainly got enough money. I thought about donating to their Kickstarter fund, but they'd already reached their funding target, so I decided to wait until it hits the market to see if I want one.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
So you think that suddenly everyone who already has Steam accounts are going to ditch those and flock to the App Store? Why? Why do you think that there's going to any sort of migration at all? The trivial convenience of not needing to install Steam? The joy of re-purchasing games you've already purchased on Steam? The joy of proably paying more for the games since the sales on the App Store won't be as good? The probably lack of a catalog for a long time? What will the benefit of the App Store be that makes it such a threat?
it's not panic, it's a calculated shot across the bow at microsoft
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Well it has to be certainly a decision based on something other than profits I will grant you that. The y are either using it for leverage and or have another devious plan like a console, etc.
Got Code?
The post to which I was replying stated that Windows was in widespread use as a gaming platform within a decade and a half (15 years) of it's release (1986), so by 2001. It actually happened before this, but what I was trying to do was illustrate that Linux is set to acheive this in the same timeframe. You can think my intentions are different than they actually are, but it is literally impossible to disagree with my regarding my own intentions, only I know those and I am telling you, as a 12 year Linux user, that I am certainly supportive of the platform and was posting in its defense. If you think that requires your agreement, your ego is too inflated for me to continue this line of conversation.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I counted Civ 5. It's a major game from 2+ years ago. Diablo 3 isn't on Steam. Troll harder.
"A major game from 2+ years ago" that happened to launch at the same time on Mac as it did on Windows.
They still fucked it up (no cross platform multiplayer), but it did launch at the same time.
"Troll harder" indeed.
The phrase is "champing at the bit", but otherwise, salient points.
Wait, I'm confused, did you own an ISP from 1993 to 1995, or from 1994 to 1996? It seems to change from one thread to the next. Are you sure you're not bullshitting?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
On your a) point, yes, it will be extremely difficult for MS to make that happen but they have an Ace in the hole with Metro. If they can get consumers to move to using Metro in lieu of the classic desktop then they don't have to de jure block third party developers because the consumers have de facto done it for them. This scares Valve.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
I still remember Loki Software which went belly-up in 2001. They had some great titles and I supported them by buying 4-5 games from them. Most of the ports they made have been taken over by LPG. :(
I was also pleased with the Linux version of Never Winter Nights but very disappointed when NWN2 was only available for Windows platforms. Other good Linux Games: Savage, Savage2, UT2004 and more.
First, the premise that there are no gamers on linux, therefore, don't create games on linux is a chicken and egg problem. Game *developers* have to make an unprofiitable leap of fait to get the ball rolling. Given a large potential base of users that grudgingly tolerate MS platform (potentially exacerbated by Win8), giving them an out may be sufficient.
As Steam has taken on a life of it's own, Valve seems to be less and less about developing games and more and more about being a marketplace for digitally purchased gaming content. This presumably means that revenue from that endeavor is dwarfing what they historically have gotten from developing games, *despite* having some of the most acclaimed titles of all time. Both Apple and MS threaten that by wanting to push their own app distribution facility as first-party, reducing the value of the Steam offering. It is in Valve's *long* term interests to try to push users away from platforms like Windows and OSX onto a platform that is the least likely to have a single coherent strategy lock out things like Steam. To this end, Valve could even do something insane, like release HL2: Ep3 as a Linux exclusive. Would that be catastrophic for the sales of that title? Absolutely. Would it simultaneously bring in a critical mass of gamers to Linux, a platform where Valve may continue to thrive in an 'app store' world? Very possible.
Finally, sometimes it's not *purely* a straightforward business call. For reference, see Blizzard. Blizzard titles have consistently supported MacOS since 1994, even in the most pessimitistic times for the platform. It's quite possible the Mac versions of many of their titles 15 years ago lost money compared to effort required to do it, but they presumably maintained that effort out of love of the platform or continued need to prove they can be a multi-platform company. Keep in mind that while Linux isn't that directly popular (ignoring ubiquitous embedded application and android), it is immensely popular amongst developers and computing enthusiasts. That's the same market that companies like Valve hire from, and developers likely would support Linux as a labor of love.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Good point. Part of this is just the business decision of selling as many units as possible.
Considering that the current desktop OS market share breaks down like this:
Windows 92.1%
Mac 7.0%
Linux 1.0%
Of course nowadays there's very little difference in graphics or sound, so people just pick the defacto standard (the OS that has 88% desktop penetration).
Or phones:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/243542/android_ios_games_rake_in_more_cash_than_sony_and_nintendo.html
Actually, checking the loki games page (still up after all these years... ) it was HeavyGear - very MW like :)
http://www.lokigames.com/products/heavy-gear2/
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Perhaps Valve's efforts will help to make Linux a viable market for commercial game development?
/* No Comment */
Please regale us on how Valve's efforts in the 10's of porting Source titles years after everyone has played them on Windows and just throwing it out there for the typical Linux user is going to fare any better than Loki. The parallel is exact.
The parallel is not even close, actually. First of all, Loki had a distribution problem. They had to get stores to stock their merchandise and few would. And the ones that did stock them generally made a half-hearted effort and put the Linux games in one little corner off the main display. Contrast this with Steam which is not just a game here and there but a delivery platform. The Linux versions of games will be there right next to the Windows and Mac version and download/installation is just a click away. In addition to this fact is the point that in absolute numbers there are more Linux users today than there were in the 90's. Also, unlike Loki, Valve is working with hardware makers to get better graphics drivers on Linux so no longer will the same game run with a higher framerate on Windows which was a major issue for Loki as many of their ports were FPS twitch games where every last frame dropped (at least subjectively). Another point is that while Loki ported games, they did not create their own so they had very little ability to polish up the engine like what Valve is doing with Source to make sure that it runs spectacularly on Linux. Another issue that Loki contended with is that Linux users were slightly more idealistic back then and actually held out hope that Free AAA titles would just appear for Linux. That hasn't happened and I think the community at large realizes this and has accepted it so they are more receptive to paying for proprietary binaries. Another point is that money talks and Valve have orders of magnitude more of it than Icculous ever thought about. When you have enough money to get Intel, AMD, and nVidia's attention then you stand a much better chance of making heretofore untenable things happen.
Your point of the games on Linux being late possibly sabotaging the effort is valid though. That will have to be addressed and I hope Valve realizes this.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
The problem with gaming on Linux is really very simple and comes down to a single word: reliability
I have tried many different games on Linux, including buying X-Plane. However I found that the games are even more flaky than driver support (which is now fairly good). IMHO (as a developer) there are several causes of this:
As a developer who constantly thinks about the reliability of my software I have found several things that are critical for reliability:
I'm not interested in it personally, but it's definitely an interesting idea and I'll be watching to see if it succeeds
LOTS of games REQUIRE Steam to run. So anyone picking a game up out of the store has a decent chance of having Steam installed and running without even trying. If MS blcoks Steam completely then they kill dozens of AAA games, that's not going to fly, at all.
"Not only has Valve Software successfully ported the first-person shooter game Left 4 Dead 2 to Linux, but it actually runs faster on the open source OS than on Windows .. when Valve developers built a new Windows version of the game based on OpenGL code borrowed from the Linux version, that version also ran faster than the Direct3D version, at 305fps. link
AccountKiller
id software never had the resources that Valve currently has to throw at the problem, and they aren't trying to market just a handful of games on Linux, they're trying move an entire eco-system over. id software went under Bethseda exactly so they could get more resources, where as Valve has the highest profit per employee of any company. Carmack is really smart, but he never had a billion dollars to throw at the problem.
The difference is that Windows 98 has been deprecated and obsolete for over a decade. The Linux distros in question are current and relevant.
Personally I do not "waste" my time on games, I prefer real life
I've played that before, it sucks. There's a ton of cheaters who never get taken down because the mods are actually chosen from them. The graphics are pretty awesome at times but most of the game is tedious and annoying. The other players usually suck and if you get stuck in the Customer Support mini-games only the trolls come by (I refuse to believe that people are actually that dumb). It's also really glitchy and the random event tables seem to be made by sadists.
All in all I give it a pass, too bad you're required to play it to unlock the decent games.
Can you prove that Linux will make him money? Yes I'm aware of the Humble Bundle, are you aware that $12 is far less than the retail price of most AAA games even a year after release? Are you aware that there will probably be more money spent on supporting Linux than Windows due to fragmentation and driver issues? Are you aware of the miniscule userbase?
Can you provide any actual proof that making games for Linux will be a net gain in money?
So basically what you are saying is that it's just like your phone service, internet service, apartment lease, insurance, etc etc.
Did you give those things up? Didn't think so.
I cannot walk into PCWorld and buy a Linux OS DVD
Even if you could, it wouldn't make a difference one way or another. Almost no one does anything but take what was preloaded on their system.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
In other news, Silicon graphics Workstations and Sun Microsystems workstation games dont sell very much.
I am also guessing that MS Server platforms also suck for game sales.
Linux is NOT a toy home Operating system. It's a Unix for Servers and Workstations. Yes you CAN use it for many home uses, my wife ran linux on her laptop exclusively for the past 4 years when she was finishing her masters degree. (Ubuntu Unity is what chased her away to Apple and OSX)
I really wish that people realized that Linux and BSD are not toy operating systems designed for consumer use. No Duh the Linux game market doesnt make much money.
Now where's my RAGE port for Solaris?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Thanks, great analysis.
I see where you are coming from, id has made efforts to support linux. But it was also a company with such influence that it could have basically said on the box of its games 'also on linux!' and people would have devotedly followed it, because wolfenstein, doom and quake were all bolts from the blue that are still pretty much the foundation of any first person shooter game today.
The migration to linux would have had a flaky start, just as it would today, but microsoft would not have known what hit it, because it isnt linux or windows that is the platform for pc games: it is the damn pc itself. No one really cares what operating system is making it go! The pc game market revolves(ed?) around the principle that it is sophisticated, pioneering and not afraid to be different. It is not supposed to be a slave to any particular company. It does not care what version of office you run, or whether you are able to change from one accounting package to another slightly different one. It has nothing to do with which poxy fucking file manager you prefer. It is supposed to be a fertile playground for the ideas of game designers, without the bullshit baggage and rules that come with the traditional console market. Such a long way we have come, eh?
First of all, the Linux userbase is really small to begin with. Within that small userbase, you have two relatively large groups:
1. The ideologues, who really believe in RMS's idea that proprietary software is unethical.
2. The cheapskates, who aren't going to pay for software.
Who's left to sell to?
Meh, this is catchy but dishonest. Number 1 does not strictly eliminate the possiblilty of people willing to pay. I am very happy to give money for software that is open. I equate closed binary only software to macdonalds, and open software to mincemeat I buy and add my own ingredients and spices to to make burgers that shit all over macdonalds :)
I also read slashdot because I have this image in my head that it is enlightened.... but I am starting to wonder...
And whose company had to sell out because yet another tech heavy, marginally entertaining Quake remake failed to stand out amongst a flood of similar games?
What I find really mystifying is, there goes John squandering his excellent repulation. Roughly 50'% squandered now.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Sure, I'm not saying what he says should define the market. Just that he's one of the few guys who knows how successful the experience has been.
Also, drivers only get developer support, not sales. If you can get your game working under wine (which quite a lot of us do) then it's not so much a driver issue as an adoption/pay issue.
On PC you really can't push technology boundaries and make money from it. People have too much trouble understanding what GPU to buy, for what size display, and what drivers to install for it to be a net positive financially for most people. It's a training platform for trying to know how to do this stuff for when consoles support it, or you push boundaries with consoles and that spills over to PC. Most people who buy your game won't turn on the fancy features (assuming they can figure them out at all) and a good chunk of the ones who do will just have problems.
Now people can benefit from PC technology that doesn't require special software. Notably solid state drives, and just straight up faster parts.
So you failed 10 years ago? Big deal. It's been a long time since then. Things change.
Yeah. Direct3D has gotten better than OpenGL. Popular Windows games run very well under Wine, sometimes faster than under Windows. What change there has been seems counterproductive in terms of native Linux gaming. The Windows versions seems to serve Linux gamers quite well.
They used to say the same thing about MacOS gaming too.
When MacOS ran on a different CPU and emulation was impractical because the CPU instruction set had to be emulated not just an operating system API. So the situation was quite different.
I remember a time when people used to say DOS is the gaming platform of choice. Windows? Good enough for shitty-looking Reversi and Solitaire, but not much else.
Yes, they said that when Windows was just an optional thing sitting on top of DOS.
Then Windows became the gaming platform of choice. Sounds familiar?
Yes, immediately after it went 32-bit and became its own operating system, in 1995. One year later in 1996 we had best selling games like Diablo coming out, Windows only, and setting record sales.
What I mean is, if Linux is to becomes a good gaming platform, someone has to get the ball rolling.
Problem is they started trying to get that ball rolling back in the 1990s.
What are you talking about? Any game that is ported to Linux will also be ported to Mac because they are basically the same. They also already have Steam for Macs.
The reason why gaming on Linux isn't taking of is because of politics, not a technical reason like with DOS/Windows.
Its economics not politics. Linux gamers dual boot or run under Wine. If they are already buying the Windows version there is no motivation for a developer to create a Linux version. Basically the Wine developers make a Windows to Linux port unnecessary, at least for the higher profile games.
Honestly asking, why is steam about to become irrelevant? I thought it was doing quite well.
(kind of like porting between iOS and Android)
You've obviously never looked too hard at those applications that have been ported then have you?
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
I was referring to 3D games like shadow gun and Aralon most of which are pretty much indistinguishable.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
There is a big difference between releasing games for an existing Linux installations and the rumors about Valve creating a Linux-based console. If they create an entirely new Steam-powered Linux-based console, they short-circuit the Year-of-Linux concept. There is an established history of people buying new consoles. For the most part, they honestly don't care what the underlying OS technology is. If Valve released a new easy to use console that could play a few major league titles and attract enough developers for future games, they could easily succeed no matter what the underlying tech is. If it happens to be Linux, that's fantastic if it leads to contributions back into the mainline FOSS ecosystem.
(speaking as a major fan of John Carmack whose commitment to releasing source code literally changed my life as a youngin'.)
Use static libraries and stick in /opt, just like people with a clue have been doing since the mid 1990s if they want it to work on every variation.
There's other less extreme methods using shared libraries that just depend on packaging the stuff properly.
I don't want Dell or HP or any of those clueless, evil assholes anywhere near Linux. They'd have to charge for support so Linux would effectively not be free anymore. Their support is HORRIBLE and they'd have 10x the call-ins because people are used to Windows so they'd effectively turn the entire world against Linux solely by their clueless support staff. They'd load all that free trial garbage-ware on the system too and all their crappy, barely working utilities. Leave it up to small shops like the one I own to distribute Linux, which is not "commercial" really. Then we're working with free and the big guys are working with a $50/copy Windows license. That evens up the odds A LOT considering right now people like me pay $100 each Windows license. Hey look, it's exactly the opposite $50 unfair advantage.
The directx angle is irrelevant if the game is also going to be ported to a console other than the xbox. It won't have directx to start with or it's going to be ported to OpenGL for another platform anyway. If it is going to be MS Windows, for the moment it's most likely going to be built to run on XP so WINE is enough to handle the older bits of directx in most cases. There are far too many XP boxes out there for the games distributors to ignore.
What it does it lower the barrier to entry for your typical teenage gamer geek, who will be your well-earning-geek in a few years time. If they can just fire up a torrent, stick it on a thumb drive and boot straight into Linux where they install Steam and download their already-paid-for games, it gives Linux a big boost in credibility. Not only that, the teenage geek typically acts as tech support for the rest of the family, so suddenly every family that has a teenage gamer geek will have a much higher chance of switching to Linux.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
lol, excellent point. I'd guess this is also a fairly new occurrence, I.e. not something that. was that widespread the last time I'd released a viable game.
My phone service, internet service, lease, insurance, etc. etc. have none of those clauses, actually.
So maybe fuck off and stop talking about things you know nothing about?
It's about the long term. I don't think users will migrate in great numbers from Steam to the Windows Store. But in time, new users will be familiar with the Windows Store, see lots of games available there and won't see the point of downloading & installing Steam. It's no so much about Windows 8 as it is about Windows 10 and later.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Good catch!
Got my numbers from here: http://www.netmarketshare.com/
Probably some kind of round-up error...
Politics? The problem is that most gamers can't easily run Linux games. Most people don't want to switch completely from Windows just to play one or two new games, which will probably be available for Windows anyway. Installing Linux along side Windows is still not trivial I'm afraid.
Gamers, like most users, don't care about the OS. They just want to play, and until some major title decides to go Linux only and force them to switch they will stick with what their PC game installed with and what all their other games run on. It's a damn shame but there it is.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
DirectX helped, but it was the gaming platform of choice for years before that.
No, it wasn't. The number of games for Windows before the release of DirectX was next to nothing. Almost all PC games at the time were developed for DOS, not Windows.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Absolutely. For me, AfterShot Pro (ex Bibble 5), Vuescan (yeah, I paid for a freaking scanner driver, and I love it. Incidentally, Vuescan + Linux is the *only* way to get my old Nikon LS2000 film scanner working. No recent windows version will make it work, even XP was complicated to get support for the U320 SCSI card). And a truckload (around 200 I guess) of games bought on Steam, Gog, Gamersgate, Amazon and various bundles, that I play mainly on Crossover (that I paid too, with regular updates since 2008 I think).
As a matter of fact, I'm somewhat unsatisfied with Thunderbird as a mail client and I'd pay good money to get a real good commercial PIM suite that runs on Linux. If anyone has ideas...
No paying customers on Linux ? Really ?
Oops, I'd forgotten that I've bought a couple of Humble Bundles as well as the Linux versions of FotoPlayer and Noise Ninja (in addition to Mathematica and Bibble Pro). Probably one or two others as well as some platform-independent stuff (Java-based)...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
This guy has open-sourced all of his game engines (baring id Tech 5, but only because it's still in use commercially at id), even going so far as to rewrite critical portions of an engine (id Tech 4, specifically the implementation of stencil buffered shadow volume algorithms) so that it could be open sourced in the first place (work he would get no money from and didn't have any obligation to do... and yet did it anyway), and what happens? The Linux community, the primary beneficiary for all this open-sourced goodness which has been used in countless free games, bash Carmack because he has the balls to say that iD Software have not had any commercial success with the Linux platform.
Now whether you agree with his criteria for measuring this success or not, the number of hateful comments I'm reading people make towards this guy is truly disgusting. If I were in his position, why the FUCK would I want to even look at the Linux community anymore after giving them so much?
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
Yes, I'm sure Gentoo users would rant about not being able to play whatever games would be available for Linux. Point is, some distros are aimed for desktop use and some are not. Aim for the top-5 Desktop distros an you have covered enough of an userbase.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
well I have ten year old Loki games, and only some of the binaries run. ELF/glibc changes, sound & graphic libraries requiring old versions, because the current ones didn't maintain compatibility. I don't have the option of re-compiling closed source games. The Freetards are going to say "don't use evil closed source!" ... OK, but people seem to like closed source games, and this Valve thing is about bringing more of them onto the platform. I think this will be great if part of making games available is to give closed source games a sort of build environment, where they could easily re-compile games with new OS levels, and if we bought it once on Steam, then we can get the updated binaries forever... ie. maintained binaries, that get refreshed when a new stable distro release happens, rather than binary compatibility.
Same thing would likely be beneficial for people on android.
zenzen% file /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.24, BuildID[sha1]=0xd411a190a5169a1e304b61bdf356cb8a62dc4e89, stripped
Unless there is a super important reason, using the distro supplied version (not pulling things directly from a developer) is the best way to go.
If I write a two sentence post nobody ever reads the second sentence before replying :(
That doesn't preclude compiling for x86
Unless the application developer deliberately doesn't want to support Android on x86, or wants to charge x86 users more, because the x86 market is accustomed to paying higher prices for games.
MS has very little control over the XBox Live Indie Games.
Microsoft doesn't offer Indie Games at all in a lot of countries. Furthermore, Indie Games doesn't really work with programming languages other than C#, making it hard for indies to port their games from other platforms (without a line-by-line rewrite of the whole thing) and strongly encouraging developers of games that run on Xbox 360 to create them from the ground up as exclusive to Xbox 360 and Windows.
The Windows environment is not set up for easy tools writing; the command line environment there sucks.
In my experience, the MSYS CLI for Windows is close enough to the CLI of GNU/Linux for it not to matter much. (MSYS is a lightweight counterpart to Cygwin designed to complement the MinGW port of GCC.) Plus I can run all the applications and drivers that work with Windows.
This way to thinking is shared by a lot of people that write their own software, leading to the Unix environment at least attracting those of us that think that way.
Is there more money in selling home PCs to the edge case of "people that write their own software" or to the majority who do not?
if I need any little tool, I can just open up the package manager and install it assuming its there
And on Windows, I can just open up the maintainer's web site, download an EXE or MSI installer, and install it.
and so far I haven't been disappointed
I have. I saw binaries of cc65 (6502 assembler and linker) for Windows, but the package wasn't in Ubuntu universe, so I compiled it from source. True, the C compiler is non-free, but the assembler and linker are free (zlib license) and quite usable without the C compiler. So I filed a needs-packaging bug in Launchpad for the assembler and linker.
So basically what you've said is none of that stuff exists.
Steam sales aren't about the "publisher setting prices", they're about people knowing every day Steam runs a deep discount on a game.
"Up to the developer to implement" means it doesn't exist since there is no common API.
Forums are a requirement -- I always check them (as many people do) before making a purchase. That's a key source of information on support levels, compatibility, and so forth.
And, yes, Clancy, everyone for the past twenty years has had ratings; that's not what I said. Steam has integration with MetaCritic, a review aggregator.
You, like Microsoft, are missing the point of what makes Steam so usable. It's not just another App store. It has a lot of stuff built specifically for games and a culture that encourages purchasing.
Let me put it another way. Valve nailed it in one with Steam. Microsoft gave us Games for Windows Live. Any questions?
So basically what you've said is none of that stuff exists.
Nooooo... I said the exact opposite. Reading is hard, I know, but you got to stick with it.
Steam sales aren't about the "publisher setting prices", they're about people knowing every day Steam runs a deep discount on a game.
Already happens bro. Xbox and WP7 already have regular sales. With Xbox Live coming to Windows 8, there is no reason to believe the weekly sales won't make the jump over as well. Like I said.
"Up to the developer to implement" means it doesn't exist since there is no common API.
No there are APIs for it. There are APIs for it on Steam too. But it's something the developer has to explicitly code for in both cases. Like I said.
Forums are a requirement -- I always check them (as many people do) before making a purchase. That's a key source of information on support levels, compatibility, and so forth.
Google is your friend.
And, yes, Clancy, everyone for the past twenty years has had ratings; that's not what I said. Steam has integration with MetaCritic, a review aggregator.
Sucks that the built it ratings aren't good enough for you. Guess you will just have to open a tab in the browser you have open right now rather then waiting 5 hours for the Steam client to load.
You, like Microsoft, are missing the point of what makes Steam so usable. It's not just another App store. It has a lot of stuff built specifically for games and a culture that encourages purchasing.
Seems like they got it down just fine and people like you are desperately looking for excuses to complain (and just making shit up when you fail).
Let me put it another way. Valve nailed it in one with Steam. Microsoft gave us Games for Windows Live. Any questions?
Yes. Why are you ignoring Xbox Live? You think Microsoft can't put together an app store? Guess again. They have those Microsoft points cards in every tech store in North America. Now the same (or very similar) APIs will allow developers to write games that will easily port between PC, WP8 and most likely Xbox 720.
There is no question they will succeed. Valve wouldn't be bothering with Linux if they didn't feel their primary revenue is about to disappear.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
Sure. But most PC games these days are built around DirectX, which leads to a significant effort when porting to other platforms.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
I've probably put 200 hours into Civ 5. I know how old it is, I know there are expansions. If someone was going to buy Civ 5, they would have already done so by now. Porting it to another platform won't help their sales in any significant way, which is why I'm pointing out the age of the game.
Diablo 3 isn't relevant because the discussion we are having is about Steam on Linux and whether it will be successful. There is no word from Blizzard on porting D3 to Linux, and I would be surprised if they did.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
Nope. It launched 2 months later. Doesn't matter anyways. Bringing the game to Linux won't help them sell copies. Everyone who wants a copy will already have one.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
What? CLI is fucking easy!!
Google John Carmack OpenGL DirectX for more interesting comments on that. Originally, DirectX *was* fairly crappy, I'd hesitate to be suggesting that the first versions of it made games on Windows acceptable. Merely installing it was a nightmare.
It doesn't matter why. It only matters that they are embracing Linux.
Or do you think that all those companies that help write Linux, Apache, or whatever do that just because they have a good heart? They do that because their very business depend upon it.
Rethinking email
I bought my first copy of linux? It came with a dead tree that told me how to add users and who root was.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
XBox Live sounds pretty good. Where do I download it? What? You're saying a console market and the PC market are the same? So if it's something they've already got figured out, where is the amazing PC version? Because right now what they have is GFWL, and it's awful. That kind of lets the air out of your argument, don't you think?
Oh, and, just so we're in agreement, Steam has features that when using other platforms you have to use "Google" and "open a tab in the browser" to emulate? I rest my case.
I think my wife's mother bought her Nokia because of Snake. I was to poor and had a Mitsubishi phone :(
How I longed for a Nokia
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Your statement is the reason why Linux is yet to be successful to mainstream customers. As long as distro producers hold on to that sort of statements, they will never penetrate Windows market share.
Lose the elitism and assuming "you know better" and open your mind to what Joe Sixpack wants: you'll be successful then.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
IMHO even games from a few years ago are looking quite good.
One game I'm particularly looking forward to is X:Rebirth, and it will use "only" DirectX 9. Which is almost 10 years old according to Wikipedia. Doesn't matter. The (announced) improvements in gameplay over previous games in the X series are more important.
C - the footgun of programming languages
From 20 years ago. What has he done recently that has had any real effect?
How about his recent efforts on VR/Stereoscopic, and getting people excited about progressing that and addressing the relevant issues with the hardware? Because that's what 99% of the damn presentation is about.
Of course, with typical slashdot accuracy, the summary has singled out the most minute part of the presentation and pretended like that is what it is about.
Fear is the mind killer.
He's lying anyway. I am quite certain there are exactly zero ELF changes that would keep a ten year old Loki binary from running, and indeed, I do run some binaries that old. I'm pretty sure he's talking out his ass on Libc as well.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
This sounds like a huge extrapolation, Carmack is speaking about his bitter past experiences. Just because he didn't make enough ca$h from Linux userland doesn't mean Linux gaming has no future.
Again - my numbers came from here: http://www.netmarketshare.com/
Do you have a source for your numbers?
How so? The UI formerly-known-as-Metro isn't required, with the 'standard' Windows interface very much intact.
Based on the preview testing and playing around I've done, Win8 certainly doesn't seem any worse/less intuitive than Win7 and before.
LegendMUD
Indeed, ID was one of the big producers that made native linux executables available for their games. Hence, i did not say 'version', but 'executables'. Because afaik you had to buy the windows version, then download the linux installer and run it on your purchased windows media.
Ofcourse their linux version never made any money, they were freely available on their ftp site, retail only had windows and how could they ever calculate how much of that sale was coming from linux users?
There only ever was Quake 3, from Loki, and i bought it. However it was a limited run, so how many windows versions were still sold for use on linux? nobody knows, even carmack doesn't.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
If the FPS is better, the Windows-gamers will come...
Especially if the OS is free.
Marginal improvements in frame rate visible only on very high end systems is no big deal.
But comparing DX 9 level graphics with mainstream DX 11 gamer-graphics card performance just might be considered a tad misleading.
No one but the geek gives a damn about "free."
By the time product reaches retail shelves the OEM price of the OS is irrelevant.
Haaaa!!! I can tell you are not a gamer if you think buying an OEM PC is acceptable. You also claim that marginal improvements in frame rate don't matter. Perhaps you are just trolling, and I fell for it. All the gamers I know build their systems from parts. You get the video cards you want rather than what the OEM has options for. You pick and choose each part to individually pack in as much power as your budget allows. In the end you save money over buying something like an Alienware system where you get jacked in the wallet. Saving that extra money on the OS is that much more to spend on games. Of course, Windows never came into my budget even what I was playing games on it as a pirated copy is just as free, without the annoying call home activation hassles.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Actually it was perfectly possible to boot to DOS in win95/98 - it ran DOS 7 if I remember correctly. It's just that it wasn't obvious that it could be done, the splash screen hid all the dos booting stuff and DirectX actually was an improvement over dealing directly with the hardware, especially for higher resolution graphics, the whole VESA system was a bit hit-or-miss as resolutions climbed to 800x600 and beyond.
It was Windows NT that did away with the DOS underpinnings, and that product line wasn't really relevant to the gaming market until XP
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn't mean they are the one with the ego problem. If you think your arguments are untouchable even if the facts contained within are incorrect, then...
What you were disagreeing with was the intent of my post. That's not something that's up for debate and it takes a huge ego to think you can debate it. Further, my point wasn't "Linux has been around for 15 years now, it's time for it to become a gaming platform" as you seem to insist or imply, but you're not going to admit that you may have misinterpreted, so I'm not going to bother expecting that outcome. Pity, reading through your comment history, you and I seem to be on the same page with regard to pretty much everything but this (this being whether or not my intentions when posting a comment are up for debate).
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
And he's not the man who used to push the limits of PC hardware anymore. That would be Crytek. Rage is a shitty game but also a shitty engine, it can suck a cock compared to Crysis 2.
Bwahahahaha! You, my friend, are a perfect confirmation of the G.I.F.T. Rage may or may not be terrible, I haven't tried it yet so I wouldn't know, but its "megatexture" engine is quite an achievement technically. It definitely does push the limits of PC hardware, and it does things conventional engines (including Crytek) simply cannot do.
I think what our ill-informed friend meant was: Crytek makes prettier games, but that is the result of brute force. They throw a lot of shader effects at everything, to give their visuals a strong wow-factor. That's why they use a lot of offshore labour, they pump an inordinate amount of man-hours into everything, so of course it looks shiny as fuck. iD is more of a "proof of concept' kind of shop. Carmack works smart, comes up with tricks that even Crytek would think impossible, solutions that cannot be reached by blindly throwing more money and resources at the problem. He's got more in common with demoscene coders of yore than any modern game developer. He just doesn't have the skill nor desire to make things pretty, that's not his job.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
It is indeed a harsh reality you speak of. I know many more people who do play games on linux because WINE solves the problem of a linux port faster than the company making the game will. WINE keeps getting better, and with each new release, and each new user-generated page explaining how to get games working, gaming companies have less incentive to port to it.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
1 word...OpenMoko. FOSS "advocates" talk a good game but when it comes to opening their wallets? Not so good.
Another three worts: N900 Community SSU.
And other words:
GP32, GP2X. handheld consoles with nice support for opensource and homebrew projects.
In the global handheld consoles, it wasn't more that a tiny "blip" next to behemoths like Nintendo's consoles.
But the home brew communities went completely bat-shit crazy over them. On their own scale, said console managed to be quite successful in their niche market. Yup, a small niche market but the hardware was nonetheless a wonder success there.
To the point that the same community went on and tried to produce the Pandora following the same ideas. This project in turn *was* plagged with supply/production problems, but the company behind didn't tank, is trying to release a successor with newer and better available chips, and there is some community activity around them.
Then there's also the Dingoo, also encountering a significant success in the homebrew and opensource scene.
These aren't consoles which were retro-fitted with opensource-/homebrew- friendly dev tools against the wish of the parent company by reverse engineering. (Like running Linux or homebrew on Nintendo hardware), these are console where the opensource/homebrew communities were always part of the plan (like the N900) or even in charge.
Again:
for every Always Innovating's TouchBook project (very nice and at the time innovative idea of modularity, etc. which didn't ship much actual hardware but did inspire stuff like the Transformer), there's the success of OPLC project which *has* produced hardware, and has sold enough of them in the developed world too.
and then there are thing like the BeagleBoard in which the homebrew/maker/hacker/tinkerer community are deeply in love.
The raspberry pi, now that the supply problems have been solved, might become the next opensource-friendly success story.
So yeah, if one picks examples, there are example of failure or lack of success in the opensource world, but there are also nice success. In niche markets, but still.
Establishing a new MOBILE PHONE MANUFACTURING COMPANY can be only done with Apple-size financial backing. Not even your beloved Microsoft dared to do so (what is, of course, the reason why Sendo is destroyed and Nokia is turning into an empty shell of former self).
Indeed.
The problems are : ...)
- Building a hardware company from the ground up is hard. It requires a lot of money and experience. not easy for the avarage community members as you say yourself.
- Designing a brand new hardware is hard too. It requires a lot of specific know-how, but at least one can incrementally build on past experience (GoldenDelicious' GTAv4 didn't go through that many problems as OpenMoko's GTAv2 / NeoFreeRunner) but the first release are going to run into a lot of real world problems requiring several iteration before final.
- Getting supplies at a good price is hard specially when you work with thousands of units and not millions like the big players.
- Even more if you decide completely Free-Software hardcore, that restricts some choices (chips with specs under NDA, or blob-only drivers,
- Being a small community project make it much more sensitive to the whims of the market: the slightest problem with supply, jump of price, incident at a manufacturer's plant, etc. may cause massive delays or put the whole project in jeopardy.
- Being an outsider means its hard to get the hardware subsidized. (The iPhone DOES NOT cost a few hundreds $$$ it costs more, but the carriers are paying the different)
Now going back to the Valve example :
- they have an ample warchest and can absorb a lot of cost.
- they already have a big crowd of fans and followers, they won't need to gain that much market acceptance.
- th
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
...because morons like him continually poo-poo the linux gaming community. Pundits that think they know the slightest thing about gaming or linux, refuse to buy into the ecosystem (or they're just leery and don't want to take a stand and be wrong)...so rather than be supportive, they feel the need to speak ill of things. (It'd be just as easy for them to say something like "With Windows 8 failure looming, and MacOS's inability to capitalize, now would be an opportune time for linux to caputre the lion's share of the gaming market" which is entirely more accurate.
I would throw away Windows RIGHT NOW, and never use it again...if they could just get Linux gaming working and working properly. I would even pay for it.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Companies should just do kickstarter drives for linux ports of their games!
Got a source for that? My sources say that Linux has at least a 5% market share. It may, in fact, have more market share than Mac OS.
Got my numbers from here: http://www.netmarketshare.com/
What's your source?
Seems like it's a different ballgame this time around because GNU/Linux/OpenGL have the added value of being FASTER than the "other" os:
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/
Wouldn't, "Run your game on GNU/Linux and it will run nearly %20 faster!" seem to be an effective sell to gamers everywhere to you?
Plus, Valve is popular enough that it has the ear (and hands) of the GPU makers to truly make things better for GNU/Linux gaming.
I think they're on to something there... Get your revolution on!
FREE YOURSELF, Use GNU+LINUX+FOSS! gnu.org | fsf.org | linux.com | getgnulinux.org | ubuntuguide.org | whylinuxisbetter.
Microsoft, along with a few others. They are collected in this article: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/09/debunking-the-1-myth.html
Thanks for the info.
First let me say I have nothing against Linux, and I wish I was smart enough to run it (I've tried...)
Its market share may be 1% or 10% for all I know.
This particular article however, seems to vacillate between cherry picking stats, and jumping to huge conclusions. I've looked at different OS stat sites and they all come up with somewhat different numbers, so we may never know what the 'real' number is.
I like the idea of the browser-based stat because it shows who's actually using Linux, instead of just how many units were sold, how many were pre-installed, etc.
Let us always remember these wise words of Mark Twain,
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and OS market share statistics."
In general, I would agree with this comment UNTIL Doom released. The first time I saw Doom, I was completely blown away. It was a game changer. Totally amazing at the time. I would say that Doom was the first game that proved the PC was an awesome gaming platform.
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
That's not true, a company like Nvidia has many options available to do just the equivalent of that (nobody has CD drives these days anymore).
What Nvidia needs to do is set up a server with precompiled drivers for all the current major Linux distros. For Debian based distros, when you buy the card, there should be a printed slip of paper with a URL for Nvidia's APT source repo. For RPM distros, there should be a URL for yum or whatever the packager of choice is. It's very easy to do, and if done right, the correct driver will be automatically downloaded and installed. And when you upgrade your kernel, your package manager will simply download and install the driver compiled for the new version, and so on.
It's not rocket science, Nvidia: make a list of all the major distros, for each major distro make a list of all the distributed kernels. Say there's 100 variations all in all. Now download the source for each of the variations, compile your drivers for each, and copy the .debs and .rpms onto the packaging server. That's it. Now most Linux users will get the correct drivers automagically, you can stay closed source, and everybody is happy.
What you forget is that there is a lot of testing involved to make sure these still work - distro x gets an update to kernel y, you'd have to recompile and then see if nothing nasty got added.
With 1 driver per distro, this is pactical, maybe 1 driver per kernel version. What isn't practical is testing all 100.
Still, it would make life easier if the kernel boys did adopt a "we promise we won't break existing drivers" attitude, surely that's not so hard between major kernel versions?
If Nvidia wanted to do this, they'd have to set it up as a properly engineered automated regression suite though. It wouldn't work as quick and dirty system.