Are PC gamers subsidising Mac OS & Linux game development?

[Master Disaster]

In my mind we must be.

The market share for Mac OS & Linux is around 5% combined (taking the best estimates into consideration) which is miniscule, considering how much game studios spend on developing games these days I find it hard to believe they're making the extra expense of 2 development cycles running SBS back on such a small market.

I'm all for diversity and I really hope Linux gaming takes off and gets anywhere close to its Windows counterpart however I'm not sure how I feel about paying more at the till so a version of the game I'm never going to play can exist.

Games had a fairly hefty price hike right around the time of the current gen console launch, I find myself wondering if (at least part of) the reason might have been because of the industries current transition to 2 new gaming platforms and the risk:reward plus expense:profit ratios.

What d'yall reckon?

I'm asking everyone to be please be respectful and only post if you've got an opinion on the topic, LvWvM has been done to death and always ends badly. Let's not go there.

[Aytex]

linux sure! mac no!

[Master Disaster]

linux sure! mac no!

How come? Both use the same API.

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Hopefully SteamOS speeds it up but really Linux needs to be updated faster with new drivers before it goes anywhere.

[Master Disaster]

Hopefully SteamOS speeds it up but really Linux needs to be updated faster with new drivers before it goes anywhere.

That's the thing, driver and hardware support achieving parity still won't make the market rapidly grow overnight.

SteamOS will certainly help though.

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Drivers relatively come out pretty quickly on Linux. I think developers just need to develop for the Unix environment - that way it caters to both Mac and Linux Kernels.

 

Right now, considering the marketshare of the two is so low overall, and a lot lower for gamers, there really isn't any point for teams to spend money on something like that. What needs to come first, I think, is larger companies recognizing Linux and giving it the drive it needs for consumers and teams to latch on. I doubt this is going to happen within this decade though.

 

Graphics drivers are oooooooold and missing features on Linux. I personally think a large company needs to invest and work with devs to make a one-and-only debian based OS. Ubuntu is close but underfunded.

[,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,]

That's the thing, driver and hardware support achieving parity still won't make the market rapidly grow overnight.

SteamOS will certainly help though.

 

I'd switch back to linux right away if they supported newer graphical drivers.

[othertomperson]

Obviously. Anything a company does that is not profitable is paid for by something that is. Or if you're an ISP you're paid to do it by the government, and then don't bother anyway.

[elecxonica]

While we're at a point in time where devs and publishers can barely get their games on the PC at all, it'd be stupidly optimistic to believe we'll be getting OS X support (let alone Linux) support any time soon. Maybe in a time where publishers and triple A games don't matter, but I honestly don't see that happening any time soon.

[manikyath]

the sad truth is that i installed linux yesterday, and both steam and wine refused to work, today wine magically worked, but steam continues to refuse operation.

[Tadgh]

I would kill to move my main rig back over to #!++ and game on that - but I game a lot and that's just not practical when like <5% of games are compatible with that strange OpenGL API (or quite whatever the API is)

I'd happily spend time sorting out the adobe suite, and any other programs to function - or using Linux friendly varients of said tools - but if I can't have near 100% game support, there's just no way I can move over on my gaming PC

[Camul]

While we're at a point in time where devs and publishers can barely get their games on the PC at all, it'd be stupidly optimistic to believe we'll be getting OS X support (let alone Linux) support any time soon. Maybe in a time where publishers and triple A games don't matter, but I honestly don't see that happening any time soon.

 

How so? Getting games on the PC is easier than any other platform, since it's not controlled by anyone. Not to mention, getting on Steam has never been easier.

[Trik'Stari]

How come? Both use the same API.

two words.

 

Thermal Throttling.

 

How so? Getting games on the PC is easier than any other platform, since it's not controlled by anyone. Not to mention, getting on Steam has never been easier.

 

Corporate malarkey from MS and Sony about exclusivity. They already don't want to support PC gaming (even though MS basically OWNS PC gaming), and they DAMNED sure aren't going to sit back and allow the growth of Linux gaming.

[elecxonica]

How so? Getting games on the PC is easier than any other platform, since it's not controlled by anyone. Not to mention, getting on Steam has never been easier.

I'm more talking about stuff like the controversies surrounding Ubisoft. I feel that I may have been better off saying that they don't want to get their stuff on the PC, not so much that they can't

[ICantThinkOfAnyGoodName]

The reason why game studios develop very few games for Mac and Linux is that they both have an extremely low share among gamers. The reason why Mac and Linux have an extremely low market share among gamers is that game studios develop very few games for Mac and Linux.

If all game studios started to invest more money into developing for Mac and Linux it would directly cause their market share to rise and Microsoft would hopefully loose it's monopoly for operating systems for gamers. I really hope that Vulkan will get more acceptance among game devs than DX12, because that would lower the additional costs of developing for other operating systems.

[Master Disaster]

The reason why game studios develop very few games for Mac and Linux is that they both have an extremely low share among gamers. The reason why Mac and Linux have an extremely low market share among gamers is that game studios develop very few games for Mac and Linux.

If all game studios started to invest more money into developing for Mac and Linux it would directly cause their market share to rise and Microsoft would hopefully loose it's monopoly for operating systems for gamers. I really hope that Vulkan will get more acceptance among game devs than DX12, because that would lower the additional costs of developing for other operating systems.

Interesting point. With the way MS have been going I really wouldn't he surprised to see DX libraries for Linux & Mac OS in the future. They've added Mac OS & Linux support to Visual Studio recently.

Its a good business choice to Open Source DX, once it gets full support in Linux & Mac OS PC gaming gets a huge boost, that drives more sales in both games and hardware which in turn gets MS more money and they lose nothing cause everyone who was already gaming on PC still will be anyway.

[MEC-777]

Graphics drivers are oooooooold and missing features on Linux. I personally think a large company needs to invest and work with devs to make a one-and-only debian based OS. Ubuntu is close but underfunded.

 

Latest Nvidia drivers for windows is 353. Latest currently for Linux is... 352. The Nvidia Linux drivers are pretty much the same as windows and are updated very quickly. Performance is pretty much the same as well. AMD Linux drivers are hit and miss. Performance in generally worse than windows and it depends on which card you have as well. 

 

With DX12 and Vulkan, this is all slated to change, however. We can expect to see proper, up-to-date drivers on Linux with equal to windows DX12 performance in the near future with Vulkan. 

[snkmoorthy]

Everyone understands that SteamOS is Linux only, right? Gaming was never the forte of Linux, but if everyone agreed on OpenGL especially Microsoft, we wouldn't be needing DirectX, or AMD Mantle ... 

 

This is a competitive landscape, the best solution will hold the highest market share.

[Ertman]

The only time when PC Gamers subsidize the development/porting of games to OSX or Linux is when the game fails to earn enough revenue to cover the cost. Yes this is after the fact, but so to is any invest-return scenario.

Generally if the developers/publishers see no possibility of a profit on a port with a given title, then no port will be made.

[MLGLYNN]

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[linuxfan66]

I don't think Linux or Mac gaming Candy Crush Saga ESports will ever take off. Windows is genetically the superior gaming platform.

well thankyou for suggesting opengl/sdl/opencl is inherently useless and incompetent...(windows is the one guilty for limiting opengl development in the firstplace due to direct3d optimization)

[Humbug]

While we're at a point in time where devs and publishers can barely get their games on the PC at all,

what? That's not the curren market situation at all. PC gaming is doing well.

[Humbug]

Hard to say. Maybe we do subsidize to an extent. But the cost of porting a windows game to Linux is just a fraction of the overall cost of making the entire game from scratch. With the direction game engines like UE4, unity, source2, frostbite etc are heading porting to Linux should be less time consuming in future.

[typographie]

Games had a fairly hefty price hike right around the time of the current gen console launch, I find myself wondering if (at least part of) the reason might have been because of the industries current transition to 2 new gaming platforms and the risk:reward plus expense:profit ratios.

 

You're looking at too small a time frame. Let's not forget, many games cost $50–60 back in the 90's, and our money is worth a lot more today than it was twenty years ago.

 

And honestly, I can't remember the last time I paid $59.99 for any game. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest games have actually never been cheaper than they are today.

[SteveGrabowski0]

Calling it subsidizing is a little too far in my opinion. Game studios that develop for Linux are likely anticipating SteamOS being a force in the future. Businesses too stuck in the now can die quickly. Look at Xerox, look at Blockbuster Video, look at Kodak. It's especially funny with Xerox and Kodak, since they actually invented the products that destroyed them, namely the GUI PC and the digital camera.