Valve's Gabe Newell Makes New Linux Comments

[erendorn]

You don't count the most popular PC games "when determining the viability of the PC as a gaming platform."??? What kind of logic is that? That's like evaluating the viability of the Xbox 360 without Halo, Gears, and all the multiplatform games!

No, that's like evaluating the viability of the Xbox 360 without angry birds.
The viability of the PC as a gaming platform is determined by the popularity of games that are not playable (or not preferably played) on other platforms.

Any developer who wants to make exclusive games for supercomputers that are far more powerful than consumer PCs, can do so. There's no rule stopping them. But as a general trend they do not.

Second time you come up with supercomputers... Hello, a mid-high level gaming desktop cost the same as an iPad, and much less than an ultrabook, while already having immensely better capabilities than both of them.
Developers would target supercomputers if people could actually buy some. Please be at least a little serious in your claims

They will give you extra options on higher end gaming hardware. But I don't see Valve/EA/Ubisoft/etc making games designed with the latest and greatest PC gaming hardware as a baseline.

Extra options, like, resolution, framerate and details? Who wants that in an AAA game.

Glancing at the public Steam hardware usage stats, their users are overwhelmingly on laptops. Desktops are a minority.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=mac

paltform=mac ? seriously? That's what PC gaming is for you?
What I see in this hardware survey is:
80+% of dedicated GPUs.
Oups.

[dee.]

Android/iOS will become more PC-like, many "PC users" will migrate to Android/iOS, and some of their game consumption will follow. And this changes is a good one we should embrace

We should embrace closed and/or spyware-riddled mobile operating systems?

Why?

[DanLamb]

[QUOTE=Vim_User;403193Especially funny was when you came up with the Mac statistics (which are about 3% of the Steam users, according to the survey)[/QUOTE]

Good point. Steam users are 95%+ Windows and typically use desktops. I choose Mac stats since they easily break down laptop vs desktop stats, but you can also see that by looking at mobile vs desktop GPU on PC.

However, Steam is just a small, particularly vocal subset of PC users. At university campuses and coffee shops I've been to, Mac laptops are much more common than PC.

DanLamb, a self-proclaimed expert on Phoronix.

You're making an ad-hominem argument.

[DanLamb]

We should embrace closed and/or spyware-riddled mobile operating systems?

Why?

Sure, that's precisely the argument against Steam.

Any OS or product has it's detractors. The AOSP part of Android is pretty open by most standards. If Ubuntu or someone else has a good competitor to Android/iOS, that's fine too.

[DanLamb]

No, that's like evaluating the viability of the Xbox 360 without angry birds.

The PC's most popular games are web/Facebook games. Angry Birds doesn't even make it on most of the top 20 most-played-games lists that Microsoft posts.

Developers would target supercomputers if people could actually buy some. Please be at least a little serious in your claims

First, people can buy supercomputers. They are sold for money.

I do realize that supercomputers are impractical for games. My point is that when people say "gaming on desktops will always be much more powerful as on mobile systems.", CPU/GPU/RAM power is not the ultimate factor. Price and accessibility are the other two major factors.

Extra options, like, resolution, framerate and details? Who wants that in an AAA game.

Nothing wrong with high settings. But desktop computers generally play games made for laptops at high settings, rather than games exclusively designed for desktops.

paltform=mac ? seriously? That's what PC gaming is for you?
What I see in this hardware survey is:
80+% of dedicated GPUs.
Oups.

I did error by suggesting that Steam users are mostly laptops. That was wrong. However, I think you are wrong, in that laptops are dominant across PC use and PC gaming as a whole, beyond the microcosm of Steam.

A lot of PC gaming is Mac gaming since a lot of "PC" users are using Macs. Of course, the term "PC" is a fuzzy one. Sometimes it means Windows only, sometimes it means Win/Mac/Linux, and it sometimes even includes Android netbooks,

[doom_Oo7]

Any developer who wants to make exclusive games for supercomputers that are far more powerful than consumer PCs, can do so. There's no rule stopping them. But as a general trend they do not.

The Witcher 3 ? Star Citizen ?

[GreatEmerald]

At university campuses and coffee shops I've been to, Mac laptops are much more common than PC.

In places I've been to, I have never seen anyone using Apple laptops. Ever. But some people use iMacs (mostly shops and workstations).

[mmstick]

The PC's most popular games are web/Facebook games. Angry Birds doesn't even make it on most of the top 20 most-played-games lists that Microsoft posts.



First, people can buy supercomputers. They are sold for money.

I do realize that supercomputers are impractical for games. My point is that when people say "gaming on desktops will always be much more powerful as on mobile systems.", CPU/GPU/RAM power is not the ultimate factor. Price and accessibility are the other two major factors.



Nothing wrong with high settings. But desktop computers generally play games made for laptops at high settings, rather than games exclusively designed for desktops.



I did error by suggesting that Steam users are mostly laptops. That was wrong. However, I think you are wrong, in that laptops are dominant across PC use and PC gaming as a whole, beyond the microcosm of Steam.

A lot of PC gaming is Mac gaming since a lot of "PC" users are using Macs. Of course, the term "PC" is a fuzzy one. Sometimes it means Windows only, sometimes it means Win/Mac/Linux, and it sometimes even includes Android netbooks,

Your point of view is really skewed. Just because you see a lot of mobile chips listed in steam hardware statistics does not mean that developers are targeting mobile devices at all. Everyone that I know that plays games on Steam has a laptop, so would it not make sense for them to log into Steam on their laptop to talk to their friends? None of those people play games seriously on their laptop. When they want to play a game, they play it on their desktop which is far more comfortable and capable. Can you name any games displayed on Steam that display laptop graphics chips when mentioning system requirements? Furthermore, what do you mean game developers don't make games for high end desktops with high end GPUs? Why in the heck did I spend a decent amount of money buying a $500 graphics card with a powerful high end CPU just so I could better run a lot of games that my previous high-end machine struggled with, such as Shogun 2 Total War and Rome II Total War? You are implying that such games do not exist. It is a fact that your point of view is incredibly silly, at best.

[kayosiii]

Good point. Steam users are 95%+ Windows and typically use desktops. I choose Mac stats since they easily break down laptop vs desktop stats, but you can also see that by looking at mobile vs desktop GPU on PC.

However, Steam is just a small, particularly vocal subset of PC users. At university campuses and coffee shops I've been to, Mac laptops are much more common than PC.



You're making an ad-hominem argument.

How many of those laptops are actually running MacOS however. I know a lot of people who run windows on Apple hardware.

[DanLamb]

How many of those laptops are actually running MacOS however. I know a lot of people who run windows on Apple hardware.

I run Ubuntu Linux on Mac hardware. I know lots of people who do that. I know people will run vm/emulation/bootcamp to use Windows apps.

A lot of people actually do use MacOS. I know because I can see the screens and it's easy to tell them apart.