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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."
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
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.
Or: after departure of John Romero.
The guys together were a great combo. Separately, they are just mediocre.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
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.
It could be worse. At least Carmack hasn't married Yoko Ono.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Regardless, I'd say he's pretty familiar with the gaming market with a better-than-average understanding of how viable the platform is.
And I say this with all due respect to my fellow linux users, I'm pretty sure he's right on target here. That's not to say it can't change... it's just an accurate comment on the current state of things.
So there's no need to "poison the well" here by trying to sell everyone on Carmack's supposed irrelevance.
Steam isn't going to magically create supply or demand by itself.
No it won't. Steam occupies that niche between the two: Marketing.
Steam doesn't create supply or demand. It aggregates them. It brings all the Suppliers and Consumers under one roof. Consumers looking for Linux games can browse Steam rather than hunting down lists of "10 Best Commercial Games For Linux (by Some Guy; Jan 23, 2008)", and developers looking for Linux customers can upload to Steam rather than create their own distribution channels.
As a whole games are mostly pirated
I like to pirate stuff as much as the next guy, but that's simply not true. Yes, many people pirate software on the PC, but the fact remains that a HUGE part of the gaming market is not on a PC at all, and pirating games for console systems has become exceedingly complicated.
Even on the PC, sales still outweigh pirated copies by quite a bit. The media and industry really want you to believe that piracy is this HUGE issue driving them out of business, but it isn't at all. My personal experience is when working for Sony, our sales team estimated the total loss to piracy to be right around 1.2% of our total sales. Some months would be as high as 2.5% or so, but usually much less.
My only idea for why software developers might be struggling is a lack of original material. Is Killzone 8 or CoD:12 really going to sell as much as Killzone or CoD: 2/3? Of course not, people get bored with that identical rehashing of control, plot, graphics, etc. Also, the technology used for games has nearly stagnated. Yes, you have all the new DirectX 10/11 geometry shaders and cool features like that, but due to the cost of hardware to properly run them most people remain at a DX9.0c level of gaming. With new computers shipping with DX10/11 compatible hardware now, they can use the newer games but just because that feature is supported doesn't mean it will run at full, or even one step above the lowest settings. Even simple games like Minecraft (which prides itself in being low-res) require more in the way of graphics and hardware than a stock one-year-old i3 laptop can provide.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
It's been a very good month for me, +5-wise, so I can afford to say this:
"I don't know what Carmack is talking about -- Linus is a hell of a game market: there are hundreds of thousands of Linux users, each one of which is ready to bittorrent the games."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.