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So there aren't even much game developers developing for *nix, it is an empty market and still not much people are using linux and especially gamers in my case, it's pretty sad and i think, will have to wait for the final release of steam OS to see if there is jump in games and developers(game) for linux.
So there aren't even much game developers developing for *nix, it is an empty market and still not much people are using linux and especially gamers in my case, it's pretty sad and i think, will have to wait for the final release of steam OS to see if there is jump in games and developers(game) for linux.
Well, that wasn't what you asked, was it.
There are tons of developers developing, and that have released, excellent games for Linux. These games tend to be cross-platform, and to run equally well on Linux, Windows and (in most cases) Mac. That's the way it should be.
Ok so there are not much developers developing for games on *nix system because of small market and this lead to an empty market, not many has took initiative to actually develop for linux,it's pretty sad and in the case of big companies i think they are jsut behing making big bucks and nothing else and leaving nix market empty.
Ok so there are not much developers developing for games on *nix system because of small market and this lead to an empty market, not many has took initiative to actually develop for linux,it's pretty sad and in the case of big companies i think they are jsut behing making big bucks and nothing else and leaving nix market empty.
Is your personal evaluation of the Linux games market really that it's "empty"?
I recently had to start a thread to get help prioritizing my queue of Linux games to go through:
If that's the yardstick you're using, then, well, I'm sorry, but the situation is not going to change. Linux games these days tend to be cross platform releases, and that's what technology trends (SDL2, Unity, and yes, Wine) have been making easier and easier.
If you want someone to release a killer-app Linux-exclusive game that will set a trend of more Linux exclusives, you're going to have to be the one to do it.
If that's the yardstick you're using, then, well, I'm sorry, but the situation is not going to change. Linux games these days tend to be cross platform releases, and that's what technology trends have been making easier and easier.
And if you want someone to release a killer-app Linux-exclusive game that will set a trend of more Linux exclusives, you're going to have to do it yourself.
Thanks man for ur views and will have to do it myself if i really want to make something *nix exclusive.
Ok so there are not much developers developing for games on *nix system because of small market and this lead to an empty market, not many has took initiative to actually develop for linux,it's pretty sad and in the case of big companies i think they are jsut behing making big bucks and nothing else and leaving nix market empty.
So in your view a company should not make money? Kind of hard to pay the bills if you don't focus on making money...
This is the reason hardware developers don't invest much effort optimizing their drivers for Linux - the potential customer base is just to small to "justify" the development costs.
You must be kidding. AMD has two driver development teams, one for the open source driver, one for the proprietary driver. Nvidia has a Linux driver development team working on their drivers, delivering a first class graphics driver. Just because a large part of their high performance customers (those running the FireGL and Quadro cards worth a few thousand dollars) actually run Linux on their system. And not some random "hobby" distro, but the commercial ones: RHEL and Suse.
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Also, Linux tends to focus a lot on keeping very old hardware alive and operational but this old hardware is ill suited for gaming. Look at questions in the newbie section, many deal with getting a distro to run on a 10+ year old computer - these ain't gaming platforms for sure.
Of course, some people would rather change to Linux to have support for their OS again isntead of having to buy a new system (despite the old working fine) only to get a newer OS running. That people try to do that is nonetheless no indication at all that Linux focuses on old hardware, make the test yourself, but reverse: Look in the forums how many people try to get Linux working on new hardware.
And in the end, my 6 years old laptop with a weak dual.core CPU and chipset graphics on the very low end is still good enough to run many games, all of these games have I bought because they run on Linux and my old hardware (though I also have bought some that will only run on my fairly powerful desktop system:
The Book of Unwritten Tales
The Journey Down: Chapter One (I hope Chapter Two comes soon, will buy that too)
Rogue Legacy
Teslagrad (well, I did not buy that, but got it for free while helping in the Beta tests)
Avadon: The Black Fortress
Dungeons of Dredmor
Eschalon: Book 1 (I will buy the other ones when I have played through this part)
Shadowrun Returns (+ Dragonfall add-on)
Tales of Maj'Eyal (you can get this one for free, but since it is a good game I wanted to support the developer)
Game Dev Tycoon
Papers, Please
As I said, these are only the ones that I have bought that run on my old laptop (and many of them will run on even older hardware).
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When folks develop software for a version of Windows, they are guaranteed a level of hardware that will be available as each version of Windows had very specific minimum hardware requirements. With Linux you may be running on a quad core (or better) with 32GB RAM or a Pentium with 256K RAM...
The minimum requirements for Windows 7 (the version most used for Windows gaming) are:
1 GHz CPU
1GB RAM
16 GB disk space
DirectX 9 capable graphics hardware
That means you will find Windows 7 systems all the way between this minimum hardware and powerful Intel i7-49xx series CPUs with quad-SLI and 32GB or more of RAM, running on a fast SDD.
That is the reason why game developers publish the minimum requirements on the boxes and online stores. I don't see why this should be any different on Linux. Let's see, minimum requirements for Ubuntu, most used on Steam for gaming:
Very spiffy info folks but the market share is still 2% - so how much money will any company spend to chase 2% of the total customer base? I'm not a Linux basher, just someone that understands business decisions.
I'm on a number of Linux forums and the questions about old computers probably outnumber the questions about newer computers at least 10 to 1. The end of XP has caused a big influx to Linux and the last XP machine was probably built 10 years ago at least.
And the minimums required are just that - bare minimums. To achieve reasonable performance requires lot more than the minimum hardware. Anyway, we all have opinions...
Very spiffy info folks but the market share is still 2% - so how much money will any company spend to chase 2% of the total customer base? I'm not a Linux basher, just someone that understands business decisions...
First, anyone who understands business decisions knows that 2-3% of anything isn't negligible. 2% is one in 50. And 3% is one in 33. It was also established upthread that the 2-3% in question amounts to a market size of one and a half million. I'm amazed that someone who claims to have a background in corporate finances would be harping "hurr hurr 2% 2% 2% whatever man still 2% ur arguments r invalid" without ever considering "2% of what number?", and then ignore that number when it was given.
Second, how much money do you think any company actually needs to spend? You have already seen from the *ahem* very spiffy info that if a game developer wants to support Linux, then the extra cost is negligible these days. And in cases where the cost is higher than "already included", many companies have already decided that the investment was worth making. That goes not only for game developers, but also for hardware manufacturers. Some very spiffy info has been posted upthread about how that includes significant ongoing investments by all 3 video card/chipset manufacturers. Are you saying that you understand their business decisions better than they do?
The amount of the investment may or may not be a proportionate 2 percent. That doesn't matter; what matters is whether it's enough for the support to be there.
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I'm on a number of Linux forums and the questions about old computers probably outnumber the questions about newer computers at least 10 to 1. The end of XP has caused a big influx to Linux and the last XP machine was probably built 10 years ago at least.
That sounds like a large, emerging, untapped market.
I switched to Linux on Jan 2020. That is when Win 7 support stopped. A few months before that, I was testing Linux, to see what applications I can switch to under Linux, how to configure some of the basic OS stuff as I did under Windows.
Since I am also interesting in gaming, I kept some of the numbers from https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
Here are some numbers:
Monday, Jan 06, 2020
Windows 96.86 96.86
Mac OSX 2.47 2.47
Linux 0.67 0.67
Thursday, Jan 28, 2021
Windows 96.41 96.41
Mac OSX 2.82 2.82
Linux 0.78 0.78
Wednesday, Sep 29, 2021
Windows 96.49 96.49
Mac OSX 2.49 2.49
Linux 1.02 1.02
Wednesday, Nov 17, 2021
Windows 96.32 96.32
Mac OSX 2.55 2.55
Linux 1.13 1.13
Wednesday, Feb 09, 2022
Windows 96.17 96.17
Mac OSX 2.77 2.77
Linux 1.06 1.06
Wednesday, Jun 22, 2022
Windows 96.68 96.68
Mac OSX 2.2 2.20
Linux 1.12 1.12
Friday, Aug 12, 2022
Windows 97.03 97.03
Mac OSX 1.74 1.74
Linux 1.23 1.23
Thursday, Oct 13, 2022
Windows 96.41 96.41
Mac OSX 2.36 2.36
Linux 1.23 1.23
Friday, Jan 13, 2023
Windows 96.14 96.14
Mac OSX 2.48 2.48
Linux 1.38 1.38
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