Comment Utterly fails to grasp the scale of the problem (Score 2, Informative) 540
Okay, some background; up until November last year, I worked in the games industry, coding for Windows and Xbox. I'm now working as a (non-games) developer under Linux. This article utterly fails to get a handle on the size of the gulf between the Windows games platform and the Linux one.
Firstly, and this is a cliche, but hardware support under Linux is poor. Yes, I know you can get drivers for NVidia (and more recently ATI) video cards, but in terms of technological development, these drivers are way, way behind the Windows equivalents. Support for sound under Linux is a complete joke - it's still at the level of playing back PCM data on one or more channels. Fuck, even the GBA can do that; consumer soundcards these days are massive DSP monsters; most of them support at least EAX 2.0, which provides a massive range of reverb, occlusion/diffusion and other environmental effects. EAX 4.0 is incredibly powerful and complex - it allows detailed environmental modelling with up to four simultaneous environments and a complex mixer/router model to allow you to, say, stand in a metal room and listen to an explosion coming from a padded room joined to your room by a stone tunnel. All hardware accelerated.
Secondly, software support is poor. SDL is getting better, but frankly, DirectX is a bloody marvel. It's a standardised, extensible interface that presents a consistent API to an enourmous range of hardware; it's still flexible enough to allow you to optimise for certain cards whilst remaining consistent enought that all hardware will function to some extent.
Thirdly, there's no incentive for publishers to publish games on Linux; Linux represents a tiny fraction of the desktop market, and most Linux users run Windows or own games consoles anyway. They've got nothing to gain from publishing Linux conversions, and with the costs of games development spiralling to Hollywood-esque levels, the extra cost of developing for a minority platform like Linux just doesn't make sense.
Fourthly, PC gaming is dying on its arse anyway: consoles are where the real money is at. Publishers are now considering Windows to be a risky platform to publish on, because the market is hyper-saturated, and unless you get a guaranteed number one, you might as well just throw your money down a big hole and bury it. If *Windows* is a risky platform, then Linux doesn't even get a look in.
If I'd have bounced the idea of doing a Linux port of our game off our publishers/producers/management, they'd have just laughed at me. Linux isn't a serious platform for games, and I can't see that changing in the short-medium term. Sorry.
Firstly, and this is a cliche, but hardware support under Linux is poor. Yes, I know you can get drivers for NVidia (and more recently ATI) video cards, but in terms of technological development, these drivers are way, way behind the Windows equivalents. Support for sound under Linux is a complete joke - it's still at the level of playing back PCM data on one or more channels. Fuck, even the GBA can do that; consumer soundcards these days are massive DSP monsters; most of them support at least EAX 2.0, which provides a massive range of reverb, occlusion/diffusion and other environmental effects. EAX 4.0 is incredibly powerful and complex - it allows detailed environmental modelling with up to four simultaneous environments and a complex mixer/router model to allow you to, say, stand in a metal room and listen to an explosion coming from a padded room joined to your room by a stone tunnel. All hardware accelerated.
Secondly, software support is poor. SDL is getting better, but frankly, DirectX is a bloody marvel. It's a standardised, extensible interface that presents a consistent API to an enourmous range of hardware; it's still flexible enough to allow you to optimise for certain cards whilst remaining consistent enought that all hardware will function to some extent.
Thirdly, there's no incentive for publishers to publish games on Linux; Linux represents a tiny fraction of the desktop market, and most Linux users run Windows or own games consoles anyway. They've got nothing to gain from publishing Linux conversions, and with the costs of games development spiralling to Hollywood-esque levels, the extra cost of developing for a minority platform like Linux just doesn't make sense.
Fourthly, PC gaming is dying on its arse anyway: consoles are where the real money is at. Publishers are now considering Windows to be a risky platform to publish on, because the market is hyper-saturated, and unless you get a guaranteed number one, you might as well just throw your money down a big hole and bury it. If *Windows* is a risky platform, then Linux doesn't even get a look in.
If I'd have bounced the idea of doing a Linux port of our game off our publishers/producers/management, they'd have just laughed at me. Linux isn't a serious platform for games, and I can't see that changing in the short-medium term. Sorry.
