Big_Rig_Stig
Gawd
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That's excellent to hear, honestly. We *NEED* Linux to become more mainstream and user-friendly, especially if average users want to protect their identities and data as we go forward.
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Big_Rig_Stig
Gawd
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I honestly thought they could make a go with the Steam Machine; but, as I said before, they needed to price the machines to be *competitive* with the consoles. Yes, they'd take a loss initially, but that's exactly how the consoles (and Japanese cars) got their footholds: by taking a loss on the base hardware, and raking it in on the software. Valve should've had cash in the bank to cover those losses, and priced the games such that they made up the difference without having to charge $75 per title.
But... It never happened ...
Big_Rig_Stig
Gawd
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Dovetails nicely with my "Gabe doesn't give a fuck about product anymore" theory.
Big_Rig_Stig
Gawd
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(holy crap, a heatlesssun post that's pro-linux??? I think I'm having a stroke...)
Big_Rig_Stig
Gawd
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heatlesssun
Extremely [H]
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LOL! I honestly don't see much desktop Linux hate these days, certainly not me. What I hate is when people oversell something. Desktop Linux gaming, sure it's come a long way since Steam support, and if you're a Linux fan and don't want to touch Windows you certainly can game on it. But compared to Windows for gaming it sucks. That's a big reason why Steam Machines failed.
PC gaming is a strength of Windows. I'm not saying that for forever and always that will always be the case and that Valve shouldn't try. What I'm saying if they are really serious they need to try a lot harder. There's no way five years into this that the current results are what they were aiming for.
I'm glad your game for Linux domination. (bad pun sorry)
Really though as we have talked about before. Game development as you very well know is a 3-5 year cycle for AAA titles. The first year or two was getting the traction with developers to do things like Porting somewhat recent engine games. We have been getting the stream of those ports... and no on is arguing the first handful of ports was ruff. The ports the last few years has been better as more of those games are using newer versions of engines that used at least some cross platform code.
Valves work with game developers was always a 5-10 year play because game development takes years to complete. You can't start a game on one engine and 2-3 years in switch. (ok well you can if you ask Chris Roberts or John Romero but it rarely works out). Its the exact reason why even all mighty MS can announce something like DirectX 12 in March 2014 and in April 2018 we have 29 DirectX 12 games. Even I will not call DX12 a complete failure even though 29 games in 4 years is like what 0.00001% of all windows games released right ? I get that with 4-5 year development cycles we aren't going to see a ton of DX12 titles in the first 4-5 years. The next year or two will be the true measure of DX12, even though its already 4 years old.
Valve has taken linux gaming from less then 1000 titles 3 years ago... to over 3000 today. That is a pretty good pace, and a lot of games hitting in the next 1-2 years will be using newer cross platform capable engines and a good number will be running Vulcan which should make official Linux versions easier, not to mention the possibility of simply running the windows compiled versions running vulcan in wine.
heatlesssun
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We'll see. After 5 years we have enough history to see where this tracking. No one is denying that Linux gaming in terms of content is growing but it's still somewhat behind macOS and Windows gaming has taken off. Just since January 1, 2018, Steam has added over 2700 Windows titles compared to 600 for macOS and less than 400 for Linux. That kind of disparity year after year simply isn't favorable to Linux gaming for those who actually want to play games.
You keep going on about windows "taking off" what do you consider taking off.... game turn ?
Yes new games come out all the time... people stop buying the old ones my friend. Its like the movie industry. No one says look look look the movie industry is "Taking off" because this year they got 2000 brand new movies into theaters. They got 2000 brand new movies into theaters last year as well.
Using steam numbers and claiming look windows gaming is growing is NOT reflective of all of windows or PC gaming. Its reflective of Steam growth.... and yes Steam has grown year over year as more and more users ditch brick and mortar stores. That isn't windows growth its Steam growth. (and even when steam kicks a game for being nothing but a scam they still count those numbers at the end of the year btw lol)
So yes game developers may have added 4 - 6 thousand games per year the last 2-3 years. The point is the Linux releases have went from a few hundred a year to four digits per year in that same span. So instead of looking at 4-5 years of steam sales a time in which the service itself was growing. Look at the last year where 6,000 or so real titles where released for windows... and compare to 1,000 or so Linux titles released in the same time frame. Is it = well no of course it isn't but its a massive jump from next to nothing. We went from less then 1% of games being released with Linux versions to close to 20%.
If that isn't fast enough for you that's cool... but considering game development cycles I think that is pretty darn impressive.
blackacidevil
Gawd
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Not one of which was actually developed by Valve themselves.
BloodyIron
2[H]4U
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heatlesssun
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Steam is just a digital store and many of its offerings are in other stores. Growth in Windows only titles isn't Steam growth, it's growth in Windows gaming that allows Steam and other stores to offer more Windows games. The same is also true of macOS and Linux but Windows titles grow at a much faster clip. It's Windows game developers driving the content growth, not the stores themselves.
In a vacuum sure growth in Linux gaming looks great. The question isn't if you or I think the state of Linux gaming is good, it's what the typical PC gamer thinks. Indeed the new title percentage is dropping quite a bit for Linux. Less than 15% of the new titles on Steam this year have Linux versions, that goes up a bit to 16% if you discount VR titles. So all of the growth from a Linux fans perspective only means that from the PC gamers point of view, far more often than not something they want to play won't have a native Linux version. That's simply not good enough.
Wait I think I see the fail in your logic.
How do you think 15% of titles is a drop ???
It was never ever ever higher then that.
Do you really think the 200 or so AA-AAA Linux titles released 4 years ago was higher then 15% of all PC games. LMAO
Linux has went from like 0.0001% 5 years ago to like 2% to like 7% 3 years ago to now 15%.
That is AMAZEBALLS growth. I don't work in the gaming industry but I have worked enough sales jobs over the years to tell you that doubling your market share growth rate every 1-1.5 years is next to impossible. Linux is growing and fast no matter what you want to believe my friend.
heatlesssun
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The new title counts for Windows have spiked starting about 2015 and the gap between Windows grew between macOS and Linux. So for a while that gap was kind of closing and now it's widening. Kind like how the Linux user base for Linux was something like 1.6% in 2014 and then pretty much collapsed.