id Software: Linux Hasn't Produced Positive Results

[entropy]

It's even 15 Euros not Dollars.
And they call this Quakecon _sale_.

Without discount you can get HL2 for EUR 9.
Released about the same time and comes with great game content.

Btw, does anybody know a rough number how much it costs
publishers to sell games on Steam?

[blackout23]

You can get Torchlight 2 + Torchlight 1 for 18 Euros if you preorder and I bet it's 100x more fun than Doom 3.
I found Doom 3 to be very slow and boring huge contrast to the fast paced Quake 3.

[Pallidus]

"The only thing that keeps Linux from getting higher market share are games."

yep, it's not the highly complex hardware/software integration with open source drivers this and binary drivers that, non working hardware, missing firmwares this and that... all a nightmare to install and distros that for some reason are simply not compatible with your laptop.

It's not the difficulty of installing software without having to resort to a console and learning a few lines of code, it's not the overwhelming avalanche of a million different distributions with a million different desktops everything highly fragmented in the smallest niches possible. It's not the fact that software and drivers are spread all over without a centralized repo
It's not a community that sabotages itself by giving their dollars/euros to companies that could care less about them (blizzard, amd, etc)


It's only games that are keeping the linux desktop from taking off

There's only one company that can propel linux to the stratosphere and it's not valve, it's intel

[sgtGarcia]

Btw, does anybody know a rough number how much it costs
publishers to sell games on Steam?

On steamreview.com I found http://steamreview.org/posts/finances/

Developers


2011 update: developers now receive 70%.

?Revenue sharing with developers under the Steam system is 60/40 (developer/Valve).?

Profit margins for developers are a major selling point for digital distribution, and Steam does not let the side down. I?m pleased to say that there are now figures as accurate as possible for each margin: 10%-20% for traditional retail/publisher deals; roughly 60% for Steam developers; and an incredible 86% for Valve themselves. Add to that the fact that Valve doesn?t take the developer?s IP and the effective margin becomes wider still.
These sorts of numbers aren?t easy to come by for distribution services, but it isn?t unreasonable to say that the 26% net margin difference between Valve and their Steam licensees is quite wide. Perhaps when xStream ramps up we?ll see some healthy competition.

But I think that's ( based per-title selling, marketing, type of a game, etc ) 15% to 30 % of price a game.

"The only thing that keeps Linux from getting higher market share are games."

yep, it's not the highly complex hardware/software integration with open source drivers this and binary drivers that, non working hardware, missing firmwares this and that... all a nightmare to install and distros that for some reason are simply not compatible with your laptop.

It's not the difficulty of installing software without having to resort to a console and learning a few lines of code, it's not the overwhelming avalanche of a million different distributions with a million different desktops everything highly fragmented in the smallest niches possible. It's not the fact that software and drivers are spread all over without a centralized repo
It's not a community that sabotages itself by giving their dollars/euros to companies that could care less about them (blizzard, amd, etc)

It's only games that are keeping the linux desktop from taking off

You are right & wrong.
No games mean no drivers ( or bad quality ), even not needed for game to play, like wifi or others, cause games runs the PC market ( really ).

There's only one company that can propel linux to the stratosphere and it's not valve, it's intel

I would not agree. Valve has guts & power to make Linux better, more supported OS. They even started doing this by working with Intel, AMD/ATI & nVidia on drivers & that's what makes Linux stronger.

[entropy]

Thanks sgt!

[Kano]

I liked Quake 4 much more than Doom 3 - which is based on a similar engine. But Quake 4 is not opensource. From JC speach i think the well known duct tape mode might be optional in the settings for the bfg edition. But i certainly dont want to buy the bfg edition just for a few extra levels and duct tape mod by default.

[Pallidus]

I fail to see why phoronix and many people on this forums obsess with games so much. Yes, I'm sure they are very important to some people, the same people that will most likely have a console... but even people that play in windows do you really expect them to switch OS's because some publisher made a 3 year old title available in that OS?

It's not hard for a company the size of valve to get a few people spending a couple of hours porting stuff to another OS, they did it for mac os x so linux shouldn't prove too difficult. This is not going to be the linux supernova you all have been waiting for.

Hell, is not call of duty modern warfare based on idtech3? that game would have probably been easier to port and sell more in linux than l4d.

And I understand that games attract people and linux needs more people but what's holding linux back is not the lack games, it's that both companies and the great majority of people don't take it seriously.

The solution ATI gave me for integrated graphics issue was "to run the windows version it had been designed to use for".

A friend of mine asked me to assemble a ib i5 for him, I asked him if he wanted to check linux out and his reaction was "nah, I'll just download win7 off pirate bay", still since it didn't take much effort I installed him fedora17 and a bunch of software like libre office, gimp, vlc, chrome etc etc

He really loved it and he kept it since that's what he wanted the i5 for.

But the time will come when he has to go the console and compile stuff and then he will probably go back to windows.

Mass adoption of linux will have to overcome many factors, one is indeed lack of applications (games included) but software/hardware integration and ease of use are much more important IMO.

[Ferdinand]

There's a Quakecon Bundle on Steam right now.
They still want EUR 15 for Doom 3 (without expansion pack).
I have no words...

I saw the price for DoomII and thought: that is way too expensive for DoomIII. Then I saw the price for DoomIII... DoomIII including all expansions should be no more than 5 dollars.

[Ferdinand]

It's only games that are keeping the linux desktop from taking off

It is for me. I have been running linux on and off for more than 10 years. Each time it is more pleasant than the last time _but_ when I want to game I can't get them to work. For this reason I have bought every humble bundle so that those linux games will be available when I try it the next time. If I can run those games easily from a store like steam or ubuntu store I am off of windows in a heartbeat. Do you know how much time I waste on keeping windows running?

[entropy]

I fail to see why phoronix and many people on this forums obsess with games so much. Yes, I'm sure they are very important to some people, the same people that will most likely have a console... but even people that play in windows do you really expect them to switch OS's because some publisher made a 3 year old title available in that OS?

It's not hard for a company the size of valve to get a few people spending a couple of hours porting stuff to another OS, they did it for mac os x so linux shouldn't prove too difficult. This is not going to be the linux supernova you all have been waiting for.

Well, I simply don't know if it will be a "Linux supernova". And you don't know either.

We will only see if it turns out to be a big success once a top-tier influential company tries hard.
That's what Valve obviously does, and I'm darn happy about that.

Let's wait and see.