"I don't think that a good business case can be made for officially supporting Linux for mainstream games today" - id Software co-founder John Carmack admits that he doesn't think Linux has a very bright future in video games -- at least not right now.
PC games giant Valve has been showing huge support for Linux games recently, adding Linux titles to its online catalogue, and stating that its upcoming living room PC will run Linux.
However, Carmack this week questioned whether it's actually worth bothering with Linux, when gamers can often use open source software Wine to run Windows games on the operating system.
"I wish Linux well, but the reality is that it barely makes it into my top ten priorities," he said.
He added that those businesses looking to offer Linux porting opportunities to big publishers will most likely get turned away.
"You probably can't even get an email returned if you are offering less than six figures to a top ten publisher," he noted. This may sound ridiculous - 'Who would turn away $20,000?' - but the reality is that many of the same legal, financial, executive, and support resources need to be brought to bear on every single deal, regardless of size, and taking time away from something that is in the tens of millions of dollars range is often not justifiable."
However, the industry veteran believes that there is a way that, sometime in the future, Linux could become a viable option for big publishers.
"Ideally, following a set of best practice guidelines could allow developers to get Linux versions with little more effort than supporting, say, Windows XP," he said. "Properly evangelized, with Steam as a monetized distribution platform, this is a plausible path forward."
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Most PC games are windows only -> Most gamers use windows -> Most PC games are windows only -> Most gamers use windows...
Somebody (a powerhouse like Valve, basically) has to break the cycle for Linux to matter. I'm sure many people would be willing to switch over to Linux or at least try it if their games where waiting for them. That's basically what he says in the last paragraph as well. It isn't particularly hard to support Linux if you plan it from the start instead of embedding loads and loads of platform dependant code throughout your game.
And as Lewis says above, if you consider Linux (and at the same time Mac) from the beginning of development and you don't use a bunch of platform dependent code, then you will find bring your games to Linux to be worth while and relatively simple.
But, lucky for us Linux users, more and more companies are making the choice to support Linux. This includes powerhouses like Valve as well as middleware providers like Unity3d. More will follow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software#Linux
They could put their head in the sand and keep pushing it ... you know, like THQ did with the uDraw. Turned out great for them!
I do see there are a lot of people that like the ability to install their own OS without having to pay for it, and Linux is quite popular for that, and the open-source nature of everything. I can see this growing into a non-insignificant number over time. Especially for developers, some really fantastic software such as STS (Eclipse) -- I know you can get it for Windows, but it just works better with Linux. A lot of open-source development, tools, and workflows are made for the Linux environment.
My experience with Wine is that it is a terrible and brute force Windows emulator. When any particular software feature works 90% of the time, it doesn't really give you piece of mind, not to mention, I would question it's support of graphics and audio drivers and maintaining any semblance of gaming performance.
That said, I don't use Linux to play games, and don't really plan on it and I would imagine most Linux builds are more geared to home servers. The way I see it, most proper gamers yield to Windows whether they want to or not... because frankly that's where the critical mass is and has always been. I do think over time, Linux will become more of a force to recon with. My feelings on Linux is that it is a hodge-podge of software that ranges from awesome to sketchy. At least with Windows, you know exactly what you are getting.
Unity is great, and making a Linux version for the +$500 per license would be worth considering on any desktop release, and of course, iOS.
I have no problem developing for linux though as a branch to regular releases, but exclusives just aren't worth it yet. I think it is still a sort of novelty to say "I got it running on Linux." We're still a bit away from it being a norm. Steam will probably solve that though.
I'm really curious to see what happens with Project Eternity having committed to Linux support through Unity. If that turns out well and Unity handles most of the sound/input/network abstraction for you then it seems like a low effort way to get a Linux version out. As long as you don't have to handle tech support for getting sound working in the first place.
Companies don't benefit because the majority of gamers are on Windows. Adding further platforms adds both fixed and variable costs (porting, support, respectively).
Gamers don't benefit because unless companies can retain optimization experts for each platform (and let's face it, each major "family" of distros if we go Linux) we'll get generalized code which will perform worse than code with platform specific optimizations.
In the end, the only people who benefit are Linux afficiados who for some reason either won't pay 100 bux every 2-3 years to upgrade Windows and dual boot, or have some anti-MS thing.
MS could totally throw this away by making Windows a closed platform, and if they do Linux (or some other OS) will surge, not just for games, but for everyone. In that case though, we can just follow the trend. And by the way, if games go to "Linux" what that means is "either Redhat or Ubuntu become the standard". Debian, Slackware, Scientific, Centos, Fedora and any other distros, even if they are based on the above 2, will be unsupported platforms.
And motivations are many. I don't bloody care about the OS to be honest. I care about the apps I can run, and how easy it is to accomplish what it is I want to do. In every case outside of playing video games Linux is much better to do so.
It is also not an issue of money, tho I don't keep up with windows versions because quite frankly I have been burnt in the past. Vista/Win98 I am looking right at you.
And lastly, dual booting doesn't work. It kills momentum.
As for your answer, many people will benefit. It might even enlarge the market a bit.
It's fine to say many people will benefit, but I mean, put it concretely. I actually contend moving to Linux doesn't really help anyone except people who sell Linux. So who will actually benefit from the gaming ecosystem?
A custom Steam Linux Distro for gaming could finally give a broad base of PC developers a single target that isn't jumping all over the map.
Valve can even create an equivalent of a GL SDK to rival the DX SDK to assist windows developers making the transition.
Steam going network API in this light seems a critical first step towards vastly increasing the installed base by encouraging every single game developer to support the platform and thus every single gamer to join the steam community.
I wonder if Valve thought about buying out Unity3d? Or maybe it'll be Microsoft looking for their XNA replacement, lol.
That being said I think it's great Steam is coming full force to Linux and eventually everyone can enjoy their steam library regardless of their OS.
He gets on with the technical work is pleased that its doing well and unless someone actively makes his life difficult, like Nvidia has, he doesnt really care about anything else. (and has been quite open about this fact.)
If anyone is expecting Linus to lead the Linux community to polished PR heights it is not going to be Linus that does it.
Look at what Apple did with OSX. Boot camp was a safety net that nudged many consumers over the fence. Same with the virtual machine software like Parallels or Fusion. Maybe Valve could partner with them or Virtual Box/Oracle.
If Valve dont would be band of faerytale teller, but realy do someting, they realy could invest into good linux project in tens of millions dollars, simple donate these projects or make price money on achieving certain goal for develepers.. but think that they are too weak to do that.