Crytek jumps on Steam Machine hype train, announces Linux support
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Off the top of my head, Star Citizen is using the next gen CryEngine. Along with the next Crysis game and who knows what else.
If you mean devs in general, then sure. People writing their own engines aren't necessarily supporting Linux. But games in Unreal Engine, Unity, and CryEngine are a huge chunk of the market, and all three now play nice with Linux.
I think you might be misunderstanding what Unity is. Unity doesn't take some game and wrap it like Wine. Unity is a full game engine like UDK or Crysis. It compiles to Native Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, XBOX, Playstation, Wii, and many more I can't think of right now.
Nothing is a wrapper or emulated/simulated/whatever-ulated. It's all compiled natively for each platform.
Unity has a lot of old stuff lying around (they only very recently dropped DirectX7), so I'm not really shocked, but I was surprised it was still i386 because the upgrade should (well, okay, "should") be pretty trivial and i386 Macs have been out of support for a while.
In my experience (a few months out of date now) the x64 builds for Linux are not terribly stable, but perhaps the devs think they are more stable, or think that linux users are better equipped to deal with questionable stability and released that version despite the stability issues.
> [Despite the fact that Unity supports building native linux binaries] I haven't seen ANY Unity devs commit to making native linux ports rather than just using Unity [to build binaries for the usual platforms]. Until SteamOS can make it as simple [to build native linux binaries] as Unity [already does], it's going to be a tough sell to [, at the very least,] anyone who is already using Unity [and doesn't build linux binaries, since this sizable population has already been given the choice to "check a box and build for linux" and declined].
If steambox provides a known Linux environment with users wanting games it becomes a much better proposition to make a Linux version, even if official support is only for Steam Linux and not Linux in general.
I don't think that's a counterargument, I think you're agreeing with what he said ;)
> If steambox provides a known Linux environment with users wanting games it becomes a much better proposition to make a Linux version
That is a counterargument. I tend to agree. I hope you're right!
I know almost nobody has done that yet, but it would be great to make the previous games in their catalog available (Crysis 1 and 2 for example) on Linux. I'd buy that.
But most importantly it we need competition on the desktop. Like it or not, Microsoft still has a monopoly in this market. This can only be good for people who like technology.
The best part is, a game made for or ported to SteamOS (and Steam Machines) runs perfectly fine on my Arch install, played Portal 2 beta just yesterday.
By contrast, a game made for X360/XOne (Steam Machine competitor) does not by default run on a desktop OS, even Windows. The same goes for PS3/4.
You still have the fragmentation of the PC market, but much less so as optimization on the developer level can be reserved for Steam Machine hardware, I'm confident my GTX 660M will run stuff just fine even so.
That's a potentially huge win for Linux as both a desktop OS and a platform. I can easily see it snowballing, with teenagers going "Yeah, I ditched Winlol and OS-SuX for Fedora, rippin' though Crysis 4. Yo have you tried extensions in GNOME Shell? Shit's so cash", that's a culture change in favor of Open Source. Might not happen, might just happen.
/I obviously have no idea how teenagers talk these days
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/ars-ces-gear-its-tota...
It's barely 5 sentences... I think calling it "pitiful journalism" is a stretch, mostly because calling it journalism is a stretch. It's a news update, not an op-ed.
Steam OS is a 10+ year play we are at the foundation stage.
Things will go through the roof when computer builders start ditching Windows on their own builds. Looking for that to happen at say Maximum PC in about 3 years.
Even Steamboxes are much more useful if you just slap windows & steam on it.
S/He probably has an unrealistic expectation that valve should be able to snap their fingers and make a catalog they spent 10 years building all work on Linux automagically.
What's more, the upgrade path is there, imagine an XBox where you can buy next year's model and the games you already bought look better.
Xbox One games are already last gen graphics, even some smartphones have better res.
Over time as SteamOS gets more native titles it'll be able to run those natively.
But _today_ you can run SteamOS on a relatively inexpensive NUC or used PC as a streaming client and that's probably the kind of early adopter that Valve is looking for for now.
But yeah, the Digital Storm $2,000+ Steam Machine makes no sense to me, considering there's only one game for Linux (Metro Last Light) that would even come close to stressing the hardware.
Then again, whether it helps moves sales would depend on whether the Steam Machines get any sort of adoption and on RSI releasing the game before Linux has a lot of notable titles supporting it. Who knows?
Hard to argue with their success there...
It comes across like they're trying to guilt people into upgrading to higher preorder tiers because otherwise there won't be any more ships or worlds. I backed it on Kickstarter for whatever tier buys the game, but I'll pass on the $275 in-game spaceship and spaceship shaped flash drive (plus a pile of other stuff).
But hey, it's their money and if people want to invest it in this, that's up to them. Hell of a lot better than Candy Crush, if you ask me.
I could easily see "casual" PC gamers (people who play games casually, not who play casual games) buying a Mac for their general purpose PC and playing games on the side, iff the Mac offered decent gaming performance (they don't) and were priced around the same as a decent gaming PC (they aren't).
It's a chicken-and-egg problem, though. Studios don't want to invest in making (or even porting) games for a non-gaming platform, gamers don't want to buy a computer they can't play games on, and Apple doesn't want to invest in pleasing a consumer segment that doesn't exist.