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Is Linux doomed when it comes to commercial games?


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How's the future of linux when it comes to games?  

22 members have voted

  1. 1. How's the future of linux when it comes to games?

    • The future looks brighter...
      11
    • Not so good...
      3
    • It will be the same as today..
      5
    • I'm not sure...
      0
    • I don't care as long as solitaire is still available for linux...
      3


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As the Topic Title say. Any future for commercial games for linux in the future? Is Cedega and Wine damaging the chance to get companies to make Native linux games or doesn't it have any effect at all? You think that M$ would intimidate/bribe game companies to stay away from linux as it may appear with the case of Blizzard. What's your opinion!

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bvc has made a good point, consoles are going to become more and more prominent. But PC / Mac gaming will never die. It's a different experience, less social, more involved and given the models that govern them, PCs will always lead in hardware performance keeping them the platform of choice for thorough-bred gamers.

 

Cedega is damaging the porting possibilities for Linux right now by making games manufacturers lazy (why port for Linux natively when we can use DirectX as an API and let Cedega worry about the Linux guys?) - but Linux is growing, like it or not, and if it continues on it's current path will own a substantial chunk of the desktop market in two years time. It is already bigger than OSX.

 

Once Linux reaches the 30% install base (and it will), we will cross the line and it will be impossible for developers NOT to port their games and still sell.

 

My current business involves interviewing the people who decide the future of computing and they are all singing with one voice: software innovation in the future will rely on open source and Linux will be large force to deal with on the desktop in two years time.

 

Now, if Apple ever decide to make OSX available for PCs (the Intel Macs will run Windows, but they have an internal dongle that is required for OSX - so don't be silly and post that it is happening already, because it isn't), well then we'll have a different scenario altogether. Because OSX would kick both Linux and Windows off the scale overnight. On the desktop anyway.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think linux will get more problems at this front unless we could get console manufactures like Playstation to make there console/games work under OpenGL and making it possible and easy to port to Linux. This would be good for the game manufactures because they can easily make games to linux as well even if it is a small market. This could draw users from Windows when they now got a lot and good games that work under linux, windows are currently destroying OpenGL and these games would require OpenGL.

 

Now if sony would be so kind that they made the games for playstation working on linux system too would be awsome but probably nothing they would do cause they need a good copy protection and having a legal agreement with all its games vendor not to sell cheaper Linux versions. But still if they would make OpenGL and easy porting would be very good for us.

 

Sry this post got big and confusing cause i cant take upp all views on this, to lazy for that. Hope at least this will bring some discussions and questions that i might answer later on.

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Cedega is damaging the porting possibilities for Linux right now by making games manufacturers lazy (why port for Linux natively when we can use DirectX as an API and let Cedega worry about the Linux guys?)

I'm sure you knew someone was going to disagree with you here :)

 

I don't think game makers even talk about Cedega, I don't think it enters their minds at all. Most game makers just don't concern themselves with Linux simply because they don't see a profit in it. Some have, we got the Unreal Tournaments, Doom 3 and NWN, which were rather successful - but most just don't really care because they don't see Linux as a worthwhile endeavor - Cedega or not. Thats my opinion, anyways, I've seen no proof one way or the other. Ok, there is one interesting tidbit, the companies that ported to Linux prior to WineX/Cedega's existence are still porting to Linux! Some companies even started porting things to Linux after WineX/Cedega was created ;)

 

But I think we agree on one thing: As Linux grows, gaming companies will wake up, and games will be ported to it.

 

Consoles will not be the death of PC gaming. PC gaming still has it's place, especially with the growth of MMORPG's, you just can't easily play these on a console. I know, you can get a keyboard/mouse/etc., but there is massive patching that goes on, and most console systems don't come with a large enough HD to support this type of patching. What's funny is that, to become more robust, consoles are starting to become PC's! Figure that one out :lol2:

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I don't think game makers even talk about Cedega, I don't think it enters their minds at all.  Most game makers just don't concern themselves with Linux simply because they don't see a profit in it.  Some have, we got the Unreal Tournaments, Doom 3 and NWN, which were rather successful - but most just don't really care because they don't see Linux as a worthwhile endeavor - Cedega or not.  Thats my opinion, anyways, I've seen no proof one way or the other.  Ok, there is one interesting tidbit, the companies that ported to Linux prior to WineX/Cedega's existence are still porting to Linux!  Some companies even started porting things to Linux after WineX/Cedega was created ;)

I actually would have agreed with you until about a year ago. You see, there are currently more people using Linux on desktops than OSX - So if the game developers don't ignore OSX, why would they ignore Linux? Linux has also lost its stigma as a "server OS" or a "geek OS" and more and more home users are turning to it. Look how many members we have here now as opposed to two years ago for example.

 

I don't personally know any game developers as such, but I have written to Blizzard before - and their answer to me said that they were closely following Linux's development and would support the OS when the time came. They also said that they firmly believe that, given the current growth of the OS, that they would start supporting it one day.

 

I do, however, know many general software developers and they are all now working towards making their products available to us. I think Nero burning ROM is a good example, even if it isn't a great piece of software (the port).

 

Macromedia, Adobe.... so many companies are now strongly considering Linux. But why should the gaming companies bother NOW when Cedega exists? They will in the future when Linux has a more firmly established Installed-base, but the statistics don't add up just yet, so they leave it to Transgaming. And yes, they do talk about Cedega - a lot.

 

Remember that Transgaming is in contact with developers all the time - their core business relies on Windows games! So the developers not only know about them but are, in some cases, assisting them. Not all these games work so well on Cedega purely because of the hard work of the Transgaming team. I have no way to prove this though, just my understanding of how they do it.

 

Plus, with OSX now moving onto an x86 architecture, Transgaming are preparing to knock on doors in a big way - I'm willing to bet they had one of the first developer release Intel Macs.

 

This will all change in two years time - either OSX will have come close to the installed-base of Windows (this is a discussion for another thread please) or Linux will have - I firmly believe this. And when this happens, the developers will clearly see the market potential of native games.

 

The future is bleak for Windows and better for the Xbox. I reckon the future of computing is an OSX vs. Linux (or derivitive) world - and the developers just follow the herd.

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I think the future is brighter based solely on the fact that in the recent past, game support was atrocious. In other words, we had nowhere to go but up. Certainly, we are seeing top tier games like ut2004 and doom3 natively supporting linux. I think that's a big change.

Also, the shift away from DirectX which is windows only, in favor of OpenGL which is more cross platform is encouraging. I think that shift will continue mostly because of the rise of gaming consoles which are not windows based by and large and therefore not DirectX friendly. If you want to devleop cross platform so your game can play on a number of consoles, using OpenGL makes a lot of sense and that's a lot easier to port to linux and OSX than a DirectX based game. Note also that both ut200x and doom3 are both OpenGL. DirectX was a major factor in locking gaming to the windows platform and that is in the process of changing.

Edited by pmpatrick
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  • 3 weeks later...
I think some people underestimate the power of the Microsoft money. Think about it.

Manpower is stronger than money. Linux has a few hundred thousand developers working on it as opposed to the hundred or whatever over at Microshaft.

 

This discussion has been had. The future of software in open, the only questions are when and who.

 

And once the dust has settled, the game developers, like all other proprietary vendours, will be faced with an adapt-or-die scenario.

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Manpower is stronger than money. Linux has a few hundred thousand developers working on it as opposed to the hundred or whatever over at Microshaft.

 

This discussion has been had. The future of software in open, the only questions are when and who.

 

And once the dust has settled, the game developers, like all other proprietary vendours, will be faced with an adapt-or-die scenario.

Microsoft can buy allot of manpower for the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars it has.

Yes this discussion has been had but we are dealing with a company that is less than ethical in the way it opperates. However I sure hope your right.

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