4 ms·

I posted this before, but as soon as I did, the thead was removed for being a dupe: I have to wonder: What if Valve,and now Blizzard, push Linux as the focus o

by jeffool 14y ago

I posted this before, but as soon as I did, the thead was removed for being a dupe: I have to wonder: What if Valve,and now Blizzard, push Linux as the focus of their internal development? But give it three years. What if Linux actually becomes the chief gaming environment? I can certainly see indie developers pushing Linux, or at the least offering Linux versions, as Steam currently offers both Win+Mac versions of games. Given Linus' own recent comments about gnome, maybe some new attention is exactly what's needed for a new desktop environment to spring forward? And considering the freeform nature of Valve, I wouldn't be amazed to find out that some of the internal focus on the rumored "SteamBox" console/PC turns into a new Linux desktop. And what happens with MS? Do they chiefly become a device pusher like Apple? Are they even prepared for this fight?

chc 14y ago
Gamers are a really small segment of Microsoft's userbase. They probably wouldn't be happy, but I don't think it would be a huge dent. Certainly not enough to persuade them to become chiefly a "device pusher."
- hythloday 14y ago
  I have no special insight here, but it seems odd that MSFT would spend so much effort on DirectX if gamers are strategically unimportant to them.
  - chc 14y ago
    I didn't say gamers are unimportant to them. Microsoft is a huge company that's capable of simultaenously viewing a huge number of things as important. I think they'd be upset if they lost the gaming market (at least if it wasn't to their own Xbox division), but I don't think it would be a mortal blow for Windows. The enterprise market is much bigger than the PC games market.
- illumin8 14y ago
  I think you underestimate the size of the gamer user base on Windows. It must be in the hundreds of millions.
  - chc 14y ago
    I don't think I am underestimating it. AFAIK the most popular PC game of all time was The Sims 2. It sold 20 million copies according to Wikipedia. How on earth can there be hundreds of millions of hardcore Windows gamers (remember, we're talking about people who would switch from Windows to Linux for the games) when the best-selling game of all time didn't even come close to that number? If only a couple million people bought Portal 2, why would hundreds (or even tens) of millions abandon Windows just because Valve started concentrating on Linux? Let's say all 20 million Sims 2 buyers have decided to abandon Windows for Linux. That means Linux on the desktop is now about half as popular as Mac OS X rather than ~20% as popular. Microsoft wouldn't be happy about that, but they're hardly going to throw up their hands and stop making Windows.
    - illumin8 14y ago
      Ok, 1 game has 20 million players... there are several million playing any single game at any given time... thus... hundreds of millions.
      - chc 14y ago
        Again, where are you getting these numbers from? They do not sound reasonable to me. Millions of people playing a game at any given time? It's a really lucky game that even sells several million copies on the PC. The idea that hundreds of games have millions of different hardcore players simultaneously is really hard to swallow with no evidence presented.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - photonic 14y ago
        illumin8 don't make a habit of presuming this and that in life or asking others to do so, you should only work with facts. Check out propositional calculus (just the basics some evening via wikipedia etcetera) it will mature your mindset a little - because here you just come across as a terminal. Just friendly advice!
- suresk 14y ago
  Gamers may not make up the majority of their userbase, but it is certainly not a profitable segment that can be simply ignored. Games have undoubtedly held onto millions of users who otherwise would have switched to OS X - the only reason I kept a Windows desktop around during the Vista years was for gaming, and there are tons of others like me.
Tuna-Fish 14y ago
> As I understand it, 2/3 of MS revenue, and practically all of their profit, is now from b2b. Their core market simply isn't consumers anymore, and hasn't been for a while. (This probably explains rather well why they are so anemic in consumer space).
jevinskie 14y ago
This won't happen without non-shit drivers. I don't think we will get non-shit drivers without NVIDIA and AMD open sourcing their commercial drivers.
- Tuna-Fish 14y ago
  That can't happen. The shader compiler in modern AMD GPU drivers is based on the compiler for their first unified architecture, Xenos. Which was written by Microsoft. AMD simply does not have the rights to the software needed to open-source it, and likely never will. However, don't count the OSS drivers out yet -- the shader compilers are in their infancy, but there is a lot of dev interest and LLVM-based projects have a tendency to move fast.

by jeffool 14y ago

chc 14y ago

Gamers are a really small segment of Microsoft's userbase. They probably wouldn't be happy, but I don't think it would be a huge dent. Certainly not enough to persuade them to become chiefly a "device pusher."

hythloday 14y ago
I have no special insight here, but it seems odd that MSFT would spend so much effort on DirectX if gamers are strategically unimportant to them.
- chc 14y ago
  I didn't say gamers are unimportant to them. Microsoft is a huge company that's capable of simultaenously viewing a huge number of things as important. I think they'd be upset if they lost the gaming market (at least if it wasn't to their own Xbox division), but I don't think it would be a mortal blow for Windows. The enterprise market is much bigger than the PC games market.
illumin8 14y ago
I think you underestimate the size of the gamer user base on Windows. It must be in the hundreds of millions.
- chc 14y ago
  I don't think I am underestimating it. AFAIK the most popular PC game of all time was The Sims 2. It sold 20 million copies according to Wikipedia. How on earth can there be hundreds of millions of hardcore Windows gamers (remember, we're talking about people who would switch from Windows to Linux for the games) when the best-selling game of all time didn't even come close to that number? If only a couple million people bought Portal 2, why would hundreds (or even tens) of millions abandon Windows just because Valve started concentrating on Linux? Let's say all 20 million Sims 2 buyers have decided to abandon Windows for Linux. That means Linux on the desktop is now about half as popular as Mac OS X rather than ~20% as popular. Microsoft wouldn't be happy about that, but they're hardly going to throw up their hands and stop making Windows.
  - illumin8 14y ago
    Ok, 1 game has 20 million players... there are several million playing any single game at any given time... thus... hundreds of millions.
    - chc 14y ago
      Again, where are you getting these numbers from? They do not sound reasonable to me. Millions of people playing a game at any given time? It's a really lucky game that even sells several million copies on the PC. The idea that hundreds of games have millions of different hardcore players simultaneously is really hard to swallow with no evidence presented.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - photonic 14y ago
      illumin8 don't make a habit of presuming this and that in life or asking others to do so, you should only work with facts. Check out propositional calculus (just the basics some evening via wikipedia etcetera) it will mature your mindset a little - because here you just come across as a terminal. Just friendly advice!
suresk 14y ago
Gamers may not make up the majority of their userbase, but it is certainly not a profitable segment that can be simply ignored. Games have undoubtedly held onto millions of users who otherwise would have switched to OS X - the only reason I kept a Windows desktop around during the Vista years was for gaming, and there are tons of others like me.

Tuna-Fish 14y ago

> As I understand it, 2/3 of MS revenue, and practically all of their profit, is now from b2b. Their core market simply isn't consumers anymore, and hasn't been for a while. (This probably explains rather well why they are so anemic in consumer space).

jevinskie 14y ago

This won't happen without non-shit drivers. I don't think we will get non-shit drivers without NVIDIA and AMD open sourcing their commercial drivers.

Tuna-Fish 14y ago
That can't happen. The shader compiler in modern AMD GPU drivers is based on the compiler for their first unified architecture, Xenos. Which was written by Microsoft. AMD simply does not have the rights to the software needed to open-source it, and likely never will. However, don't count the OSS drivers out yet -- the shader compilers are in their infancy, but there is a lot of dev interest and LLVM-based projects have a tendency to move fast.