Edit: Valve's game list: http://www.valvesoftware.com/games/
On the other hand, you can put Linux on anything (for free!), from your mom's 2002 pc to the latest generation hot stuff. This means there is indeed a potential, and somebody just has to set the foundation.
As a lesser frustration, most Windows games I play natively support the Xbox 360 controller, whereas almost no OS X ports do.
Wine and other "Translator" are moving fast too, in a few release you'll see a lot of big improvements in the graphics area. Crossover latest release already profit from that.
Of course these are relatively low requirements games. Do you have examples where the performance difference is relevant, and the games actually unplayable ?
Plus they manage to have even more buggy OpenGL support, and their drivers are well known among OpenGL developers for lying about supported features.
Even if it was three times this price, what has that to do with its ability to play games ?
The cheapest iMac with dedicated GPU costs 1549€.
The cheapest Macbook with dedicated GPU costs 2649€.
A gaming rig that outperforms any Mac hardware can be obtained around 1000€, or even lower if a local OEM is used.
So why pay 1300€ for a refurbished Mac, when a brand new computer can be obtained for much less, given the saving effort one needs to do?
If you're into indie games/GoG oldies it makes literally 0 difference what hardware you run most of them on as long as they actually run on that OS.
The other things is about Wine, they're working on accelerating the Direct3D driver, and OMG, it's soooo fast now. I'm running Skyrim on a custom Wine engine (1.7.1 with a patch from the D3D boost branch), on hight/ultra settings on my Macbook Retina, It's running at 80% of the Windows performance. And it's only the beginning, it's far from done. I also have it running on a friend Macbook Air, it run at medium setting at a solid 30 FPS.
My point is that you can actually plays with Macbook nowadays.
Edit: The PR from codeweavers is relevant (Especially the part about the Command Stream). http://www.codeweavers.com/about/general/press/20131112/
It's still coming soon on the main branch for Wine, but they still have a lot of works to do. But yeah once it'll be merged, both OSX Wine and Linux Wine will benefit from it. And it's a big, big performance improvement.
And if you want to try Crossover, go for it (They have a trial), so you can compare the performance.
I'm always bewildered by Apple's choice of weak GPUs. These are premium products, why not spring for a decent GPU and call it a day? I imagine a lot has to do with maintaining a quiet experience and selling a thin computer, but at some point form hurts function.
With those GPU you can have med/hight settings on... on Windows. I'm really impatient for the release of the Wine version with the graphic boost, it should be able to run most game at 70-90% of their Windows counterparts.
The big problem is with the retina display, you have to run game at 14XX X 9XX to have decent performance, but it can be ugly, because of the display not being at its native resolution.
I'm not sure what potential you are talking about. If gaming doesn't work on OS X, I can't see it working on Linux.
As an aside, Linux gaming would seem to me to suffer the same fate as the Android market times about a billion. Too many possible variations and massive platform fragmentation. It sounds like a development nightmare.
I've now installed Linux on two custom built machines, both with new hardware, neither of which were specifically built for linux. I was very surprised, compatibility was really good, and hardware issues were almost none...
> depending on how much time you want to spend to get your newest graphics card working.
Other than the one that had a dedicated GPU (even here, worked out of the box on Ubuntu). But then, this is an area that Valve seems to be focusing on heavily, and throwing steam support behind linux is a good reason to get Nvidia (et al) involved in better driver support.
It's still a longshot overall IMHO, but I do agree that the potential user-base is higher. You can't get a budget gaming Mac - the closest is the iMac for >$1,000, and that can be easily out-performed by a $5-600 custom built box.
There's an estimated 20 million Ubuntu users worldwide, probably another 10 million or so of other Linux distros. Not to mention, Linux (and thus Steam OS) is easily installed.
Adoption isn't a problem. Gaming on OSX doesn't work as well as on a PC because you can't put OSX on custom hardware.
> As an aside, Linux gaming would seem to me to suffer the same fate as the Android market times about a billion. Too many possible variations and massive platform fragmentation. It sounds like a development nightmare.
You sound like an iOS developer. It's not like every Windows PC has the same screen resolution and hardware, yet it's the biggest gaming platform...
Have you ever developed anything for the desktop? It's not particularly difficult to get things to run on computers with different hardware...
I updated my desktop to Linux Mint 16 today and discovered that neither Steam nor Wine will install on it. Steam seems to be supported on Ubuntu 12.10 (although it does work on 13.04).
Both Steam and Wine work perfectly on Ubuntu 13.10 (I'm running both on my 13.10 laptop).
I think you just provided a shining example of the potential problems linux gaming faces...
Mint is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not stable.
Fedora is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not stable.
Arch is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not stable.
We could play this game all day to make stinkytaco's point.
But I'd put an app into production on any of the ones listed over Mint.
Either way, the fact that Steam doesn't work on Mint is Mint's problem, not Steam's...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6847940
"Steam is included in the Linux Mint 16 repositories and you shouldn't have issues installing it from the package manager. Or you can always "apt-get install steam". Like most Linux applications, you are better off installing the application from the package manager instead of from the upstream website."
now stop spreading FUD.
MMM, no. All of the others you listed, yes. Else, I wouldn't be running Linux. I'd be running Windows.
Ubuntu rocks.
Ubuntu is building a new packaging format called "Click Packages", which possibly would solve a lot of these installation issues.
It would be unsurprising, if Steam/SteamOS uses this at its core, precisely to solve the availability issue.
However, I believe that SteamOS will become the default distro for all gamers.
Edit: But, yes LM 16 is little buggy, but its perfectly usable and I am sure the bugs will be ironed out in subsequent updates.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love this to work, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to say it will work better than a platform that is already successful at getting people to spend money on games (see Mac App Store, iOS).
>You sound like an iOS developer. It's not like every Windows PC has the same screen resolution and hardware, yet it's the biggest gaming platform...
This coming from the guy who just told someone their problem is that they are running Linux Mint...
I'd wager a good portion of Linux devs are gamers, and likely just dual-boot, have a console, an iPad, etc... Seeing as how the barrier to using Linux is lower than either Windows or OSX, it doesn't really matter how many users currently use it, as much as how many will in the future...
> Don't get me wrong, I'd love this to work, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to say it will work better than a platform that is already successful at getting people to spend money on games (see Mac App Store, iOS).
As we like to say in trading, past performance doesn't guarantee future results... In any case, if you look at something like Humble Bundle, Linux total revenue almost always beats OSX revenue in Humble Bundle sales...
> This coming from the guy who just told someone their problem is that they are running Linux Mint...
Isn't it though? If a program works on every single other distro...
I love Linux, but "if a program works on every single other distro.." is disingenuous. I have not once had 100% success with Linux on initial install. There has always been something that needed to be tweaked (usually sound or graphics). No, Windows isn't 100% either, but it's more like 98% while Linux is like 92%. For the majority of people, that 6% difference matters.
Gaming on Linux still needs to catch up. NVidia Optimus support is still being worked on. Most platforms don't ship with the proprietary drivers, which are the ones that are actually good for gaming. And from what I hear, the OSS AMD drivers are good at power management while they suck at gaming and flipped for the proprietary ones. AMD also has a problem where they drop support for cards relatively quickly.
I love Linux so much (Crunchbang, baby) but it's so fragmented that unless things change, gaming on Windows is going to stay easier. I don't see any reason why my family would give up Windows with its large library of games and all that support for Linux with its tiny library and not up to par drivers. That might not work on that distro without some workaround.
Keep in mind that most people who play games (and I'm not talking about Angry Birds or Facebook games but people who use Steam) tend to build their own PCs.
And installing Linux is just as easy as installing Windows, if not easier (you won't have to go on a driver hunt most of the time for instance).
Do you have a source for this?
In my view you're either a layperson who plays Candy Crush or iOS games or you know about Steam and GOG and the sky is the limit.
A standard Kubuntu (or Chakra) install on any Intel/AMD PC made before June will likely work without hiccups or missing hardware. Most distributions include an app to specifically detect/install proprietary drivers (Ubuntu uses Jockey). A browsing of Phoronix.com will provide you with benchmarks showing the NVIDIA/AMD/Intel drivers running neck-and-neck with Windows. But hey, let's not let the truth get in the way of your FUD.
Not according to most Windows 8 users, check YouTube.
In the case of Linux, Valve has the incentive to ship a better version because they'd be running that version on their Steamboxes as well.
Nice Ad Hominem [1] you threw out there.
Which means we're left with your Ad Hominem, which you don't see.
I don't follow this argument.
1. Linux Mint is Linux. People who run it say "I'm running linux." 2. Linux Mint does not run steam. People who run it say "Steam doesn't work on Linux Mint". 3. This means that the linux market is fragmented.
You can't just exclude Mint from linux for some arbitrary reasons. It's linux and it doesn't run steam.
And Mint is hardly alone. It's very much like android, there's a huge number of possible issues developers need to contend with. This doesn't mean it's a failure, it means that the cost of doing business will be higher than with the relatively controlled Windows ecosystem or the even more controlled console market.
Hmm. perhaps you'd like some reality:
1) Person who says they run it says "steam doesn't work on linux mint" 2) others come out and confirm that it does actually work on Mint. 3) you argue with person that makes original claim, and ignore that it actually does, in fact work. 4) When pointed out that LM does work with Steam, you reply that you don't follow the argument. 5) you then decide to expand on this false premise that something isn't working with a specific flavor of linux by comparing it to Android fragmentation, even though there isn't a case of fragmentation actually happening.
You still are unapologetic for your ad hominem, and decided to double-down on the fragmentation issue to move the goalposts.
To reiterate: Steam works on all reasonably-current flavors of Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat, Arch, Slackware, and even Gentoo.
Gamers want fun. Gamers don't really care what's underneath. There was a time, back before the illegal deals of Gates when any gamer you talked to would literally laugh out loud at you at the thought of paying serious money for any game not on DOS - meaning Windows.
No, but it has excellent binary compatibility, long term game APIs, and stable 3D and audio driver APIs. Which is what matters for desktop gaming, and what Linux does not have.
As for screen resolution and hardware capabilities, those matter on mobile (e.g iOS vs Android), and mostly for applications, not games.
Stable 3D depends on the hardware and drivers, but gaming already has hardware requirements for graphics and it's getting much better. As far as OpenGL support, recent posts on HN lead me to believe that we are doing okay.
Audio compatibility? Support ALSA and OSS.
> You need the correct libraries and versions, but that's not a difficult problem to solve
Yup. That's what Steam does...
But the mixed 32bit/64bit thing is just a fundamentally broken part of wine that got seems to have gotten turned on by default before it was ready. It makes wine look bad.
And there's 60 million Mac users worldwide, and it was asserted that that's not enough for a good gaming platform.
You can't have it both ways. If Linux is a good platform for games (and it may be), then OSX necessarily is as well.
- There is a pretty sizable Linux userbase compared to OS X. Not larger, but the same league.
- Any existing Windows PC can be installed with Linux, and many other non-desktop devices already run Linux, so the potential for growth in userbase given the right trigger (i.e. games) is much larger
- A significant portion of machines that run OS X have very low performance hardware. The Macbook is one of Apple's top-selling computers, and it has always lagged in graphics.
So, to wrap it up, both Linux and OS X currently have small share, but Linux has the potential for rapid marketshare growth on capable hardware, while OS X has neither.
I foresee a few blockbuster games being ported for Linux and Valve using some great marketing for it to win PC gamers over. Eventually it will become the preferred platform. Unlike OSX, Linux isn't hardware locked and CAN spread like wildfire.
...What? That's a complete non sequitur. There are high-end and low-end Macs, just as with anything else, and high-end Macs play games just as well as high-end Windows boxes. And of course you can put OSX on custom hardware, it's just not a popular option.
> You sound like an iOS developer. It's not like every Windows PC has the same screen resolution and hardware, yet it's the biggest gaming platform... Have you ever developed anything for the desktop? It's not particularly difficult to get things to run on computers with different hardware...
Wow. Have you ever developed high-end games for a desktop? It's a damn nightmare to get fast 3D to run on computers with different hardware. There's a reason that so many devs only work with consoles: targeting a single, specific hardware set reduces development costs immensely. It's getting easier now that pre-fab engines are practical and popular and the developer can fob some of the work off on the engine creator, but testing a AAA game properly requires a bunch of tests to be repeated across dozens of different hardware setups, and you still get post-launch bug reports that the game crashes when run on X video card with Y motherboard.
And all that is just for Windows. Adding Ubuntu support alone doubles the testing and debugging load. I actually do think that Linux can be a successful gaming platform with Valve's backing, but your arguments are not good.
Are you joking? Because even $2000 iMacs come with mobile GPUs. Not to mention CPUs that cannot be overclocked etc.
That's comparable to a high-end gaming laptop, not a PC.
And what's wrong with high-end gaming laptops? My $1000 MacBook Pro has played everything I've thrown at it acceptably well, and it's not even particularly high-end. It's no longer the mid-90s, when you needed a new $2000 rig every year to keep up with current releases. For the typical gamer, overclocking your CPU hasn't been worth the effort in years.
I mean, you cannot realistically say that you can have an immersive experience on a 15 inch, 1600x900 monitor when it comes to graphically intensive games.
Also, with CPU bound games like Arma overclocking can result in a difference of 15-20 fps.
And yes, I very much can have an immersive experience on my 15" display, as can many other people. According to the Valve hardware survey, only 32.61% are running at 1080p; most of the rest have to do with less. Giant monitors aren't as ubiquitous as you might think.
You are clearly out of the loop when it comes to PC gaming, I suggest we stop this discussion before you start saying even more embarrassing things.
I don't see how it's short-sighted, mainly factual. Integrated graphics are cards are rapidly catching up to only the lowest end discrete cards available.
How many people sticking solely to laptops were ever doing much gaming on their desktop back when they had one? I don't think it's useful to conflate all the people replacing their crappy old Dell desktops with a new laptop to people replacing gaming desktops with gaming laptops.
>And yes, I very much can have an immersive experience on my 15" display, as can many other people.
I'm sure plenty of people would have an immersive movie watching experience crowded around a 15" laptop as well, but I'll stick to my large screen TV in the living room personally.
TF2 is 5 years old, and the engine is even older..
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1748747
The top video card is Intel HD Graphics 3000 and Intel GPUs make up 12% of the list.
(Also, people still overclock their CPUs?)
And where will desktop graphics be after those few iterations? Several iterations more advanced. Integrated graphics will never be competitive with discreet graphics, therefore systems that do not support discreet graphics will never be competitive with those that can (in gaming, of course).
While there may not necessarily be more features like ambient occlusion on the horizon, increased raw processing power and memory are going to lead to higher fidelity scenes at higher resolution. You're going to have orders of magnitude more detailed props on screen, and there are going to be orders of magnitude more of them. You're going to have more animation and more flexibility. You're going to have tons more lighting and particle effects acting on those multitudes of more detailed props, and you're going to be doing all of this at 4K.
I don't know when the last time you upgraded your graphics was, but I just went from a pair of GTS250s to a GTX770, and I've had my fair share of holy shit moments looking at games like Crysis and Metro.
Saying that graphics isn't going anywhere is the same as saying 640k ought to be good enough for anybody. It's incredibly nearsighted to assume that progress is just going to stop because things are "good enough," especially in the technology field.
That means, that even if they manage to beef up their CPUs, buying a cheap i5 with a mid range GPU will cost less. Plus, you can upgrade the GPU separately etc.
Frankly, I don't see the point of APUs but it seems AMD is going in this direction as well. Rumors say they're actually discontinuing their enthusiast CPUs[1].
[1] http://www.techpowerup.com/195355/vishera-end-of-the-line-fo...
I'm sure most of those 20 million Ubuntu boxes have top-of-the-line CPUs and blazing fast GPUs, right? Fact of the matter is, the vast majority those machines won't be able to run anything other than 2D games.
Also, before we start condemning OSX as a platform with no games, need I mention Borderlands 2? Metro: Last Light? All of Valve's titles? Civilization? Bioshock Infinite? Batman: Arkham City? XCOM: Enemy Unknown? I mean, come on. At least do some research.
> You sound like an iOS developer.
Don't do that.
This is quite wrong. Most of PC gaming occurs on the desktop, and desktop hardware Linux compatibility is excellent. You see more issues on laptops, true, but again that's not where the main gaming crowd is on PC.
What's even more interesting is that in a different post, you said that AMD's open drivers were better than their closed ones, citing power management and less bugs as one of the benefits. Here you are doing a complete 180.
Go to Phoronix.com and show me the benchmarks where Nvidia's windows drivers consistently outperform the Linux ones.
Maybe we should instead speak to potential user base.
For OSX, the potential userbase is always whoever has the money to buy extremely pricey Apple hardware, at least if you want to game on it, since getting a competent gpu almost always requires the rest of the components be really pricey.
For Linux, it is the sum total of all PCs out there with compatible hardware and firmware that can boot a Linux iso. Sure, you have to subtract the subset of the population that would never be able to install it - which is quite sizable - but you also have to consider they don't have to do it themselves, a tech shop or techie friend could.
> It sounds like a development nightmare.
When I develop for Linux, I use the Open Build System and throw my build script up on the AUR. If you are writing games you are using SDL, and if you aren't I personally use qt. Through that, I get FS access, services acccess, apis for almost everything, such that I don't even need to care about what audio backend you use, what your window manager is, what display server you use, etc.
Yes, there might be bugs, but unlike the Windows model, which is write for the buggy APIs because you can't do anything about it, on Linux you send the bugs to the upstream projects they originate from. Yeah, it is about 2 years until that bug fix sees mainstream adoption, but it beats using a buggy DX call for 15 years.
But the kind of gaming that Linux lacks is the kind that need pricey components. I can play Organ Trail or World of Goo on Linux right now. If I want to play COD, I'm going to need something substantial. That narrows the user base even more.
That would be equivalent to, say, buying a desktop from Dell (300~500 USD) and an XBox One (500 USD), which is a reasonable cost if someone wants to play the more graphically intense games.
As a reference, the fastest home consoles now(XBO and PS4) are based on an AMD Jaguar core (AMD's version of the Atom), with 8GB of Ram. You can build a (Faster) AMD A10-based machine with the same specs for less than $400 in Canada.
Something like $40 case + PSU, $40 8gb stick of ram, $50 matx motherboard, $70 cpu, $50 500gb hard drive, and a $100 7790 (or even better, the recent price cut 7870s for $130) and you are still under $400.
Not really. More like $4-500.
For a price of a "next gen" console you can build a PC that can run modern games at 1080p. Granted, not the highest settings but even that is achievable for less than $1000.
I'm a huge gamer type, but for assorted reasons my "real" gaming PC isn't actually at home so I'm usually "stuck" with my Macbook. SteamPlay has therefore has been a huge boon to me -- I apparently have 272 games on my Steam account, and of those 121 run on Mac. That's a really impressive batting average.
Of course, a bunch of those I can't actually play due to the absolutely terrible Intel HD 3000 GPU in this thing (Witcher 2? Yeah, right!), but most indie games run fine because they're usually 2D or light 3D.
How many of those 121 are AAA-titles? I'd like to be a Mac gamer too, but it seems to me there are extremely few AAA grade games available for the Mac. What else is there besides Valve, Blizzard, and .. Borderlands 2 & Arkham City?
It really depends what you're interested in as to whether that's possible for you at the moment. The Blizzard titles all run, the Valve titles all run, LoL runs, and as mentioned in this thread a good portion of my steam library is available.
The big missing pieces for many are the Battlefield series and the CoD series, but since I don't play that type of game I'm fine - ymmv
It's difficult to believe that even 25% of those 121 games you mentioned are AAA quality, and that's what I was curious about. What's your estimate? Could you list a few AAA games for the Mac?
On Mac (49):
All the Valve games - CS/TF2/Portal/HL/L4D
- King's Bounty
- Psychonauts
- Civ 4
- Trine 2
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown
- Two Worlds 2
- The Witcher
- Borderlands 2
- Max Payne 3
Plus Starcraft, Diablo 3 and League of Legends not within steam.
Notable absentees on my full Steam list (152):
- Dragon Age
- Skyrim/Fallout: NV
- Far Cry 3
- Crysis
- Dead Island
- Bioshock
- Alpha Protocol
- Assassin's Creed
- Alan Wake
- Empire:Total War
- Mafia 2
- Mass Effect 1/2
- Stalker
- Supreme Commander 2
The general trend is that most new games are being built on frameworks like Unity and UE3 that are cross platform across the consoles, pc and mac. There's outliers like Battlefield where the Frostbite engine isn't going to get dumped anytime soon, but I think the effort required for cross platform release has gone down to the point where large studios releasing across console/pc will likely also release console/pc/mac/linux.
The fact that I can play the new XCOM game on an iPad is pretty cool as well.
I think the presence of both DotA 2 and LoL is absolutely massive, particularly given the player base of the latter. Serious Mac gaming is probably not an option yet for players who like to shop around and play a lot of single player games, but for people who like me who just grab an online strategy game and play the shit out of it, it's actually fine. I suspect the combination of a Mac + [Xbone|PS4] would get very good coverage at the moment as well.
The problem is that outside of Blizz/Valve's stuff, if you browse Steam's list of Mac games, it's like 95%+ small games made by a lone developer, and that is really sad. No disrespect to those developers, but that kind of games just don't interest me.
But you think things are getting better? Do big game studios actually use Unity these days? That would be kind of.. awesome.
Unity is perhaps still predominantly the domain of indies, but the Unreal Engine supports Mac, which is honestly the most important one. Perhaps things will regress a bit with the new console releases as graphical fidelity takes the limelight again and Unity is pushed away by big studios, but I think the point stands that many commercial engines are supporting Win/Mac/Lin/XB/PS and thus there's little reason not to release on all platforms.
Big projects take a long time to finish - the changes are pretty clearly happening but it's going to take a few years.
I don't know what it is. The Macbook's track pad is miles above its peers -- an absolute joy to use. However, the second you plug a mouse in, the cursor becomes an unusable, inaccurate, enraging piece of garbage.
I would imagine the work put in to making OS X ports translates well to Linux and vice versa and it's the combined sales that people will consider when deciding whether to port (or what base technologies to build on for brand new projects).
As SteamOS takes off there's also the possibility of using Bootcamp to switch your Mac into a SteamOS machine if that gives you access to better GPU drivers (I believe currently some people do this for windows for the same reason) but of course you can play (mostly) the same Steam games library from either OS.
edit: a quick glance at Valve's site suggests 598 games for Mac, 253 for Linux and of those only 9 weren't also available for the Mac (they're all available for Windows).
It's also important to remember that many game makers don't make their own engine, and so the engine must support OSX/linux (most classic linux ports have used the unreal engine, or source engine). Unity is quite good in this regard, you can hit a button to export your project to all three different platforms.
IMO the Steam Machines will offer a very supportive backing as well.