AMD/ATi + Blizzard

[me262]

In the case of Blizzard, I don't think that they may be intrinsically hostile towards Linux as such (due to sales fears), but rather due to their publishers (and more so being now owned by Vivendi-Universal) who have been openly hostile towards Linux.

I don't believe that a company such as Blizzard would have many problems with regards to potential customers. Their games are virtually instant hits.

You mean Activision. They recently bought Vivendi.

Blizzard definitely isn't hostile if they made a early linux client. In fact WoW supports OpenGL, and that's the beginning. Blizzard does work with the Transgaming developers, so the "want to" is there. Take a look at how many Blizzard games run with Wine/Cedega (What's that? All of them?)

Hopefully Activision is more friendly to the Linux cause.

[Svartalf]

In the case of Blizzard, I don't think that they may be intrinsically hostile towards Linux as such (due to sales fears), but rather due to their publishers (and more so being now owned by Vivendi-Universal) who have been openly hostile towards Linux.

Yep. At one point they were openly hostile towards us but that mellowed over time along with them picking up some key people who're Linux friendly (Heh...Sam Lantiga, amongst others...). It's more the publishers that're doing the, "Linux version? No. Way." play here- and we're seeing it a bit more often.

I don't believe that a company such as Blizzard would have many problems with regards to potential customers. Their games are virtually instant hits.

Depends on the metrics they use. If they believe at least 10-20k units will sell and it's not going to be problematic to make a cross-platform engine and won't cost them more than maybe 2% extra time and overhead, then they'll do it. If the effort's bigger or the numbers look smaller, it's a much rougher sell for them.

[Thetargos]

In the case of Blizzard, I don't think that they may be intrinsically hostile towards Linux as such (due to sales fears), but rather due to their publishers (and more so being now owned by Vivendi-Universal) who have been openly hostile towards Linux.

Edit

I don't believe that a company such as Blizzard would have many problems with regards to potential customers. Their games are virtually instant hits.

[Svartalf]

If there were 100K linux gamers willing to pay, we would already have a vibrant games set-up, as that many sales would probably have kept Loki alive. No offence to LGP, but Lokis game lineup was decidely superior.

Heh... There's some reason behind the lineup deltas. Loki scoring what it did how it did and then owing people LOTS of cash for the deals they wrangled causes an environment worse than when Loki was around- they muddied the waters for everyone that followed them in that respect.

Even worse: you mention 100K potential customers, and the price of rights for games goes up. You can't sell a Linux port to any company as having 100K potential customers, and than argue that the rights should be cheap because you can't expect more than 10K sales!

Got it in one! Now, if you KNOW you can expect 20k units out of that potential market, you can live with the deal to wrangle the rights from someone like Blizzard (or Id, or...). You might even have the money backing however it comes to actually ADVERTISE the silly thing at that level. But, sadly, we aren't seeing this story, now are we?

[Svartalf]

I really don't understand why they don't just release the WoW Linux client (unsupported, if they want)... work already been done, community would love it, game with 10.000.000 players of which they will be at least some thousand Linux gamers...

Publisher nixed it. It wasn't up to them.

[RobbieAB]

Somewhere in the order of about 100K according to some figures, for WoW alone.

Problem: The most telling figures are the demise of Loki and the problems LGP are facing.

If there were 100K linux gamers willing to pay, we would already have a vibrant games set-up, as that many sales would probably have kept Loki alive. No offence to LGP, but Lokis game lineup was decidely superior.

Even worse: you mention 100K potential customers, and the price of rights for games goes up. You can't sell a Linux port to any company as having 100K potential customers, and than argue that the rights should be cheap because you can't expect more than 10K sales!

[Vighy]

Mhh I'd like to have the sources of Warcraft? to be able to add the facilities of Warcraft2 (mouse right button) and to make graphics better, keeping the game as it is... since I think it was the most wonderful game I ever played

And Diablo3 native in linux will be worth buying it

So, a better linux / open source support from Blizzard will be much welcome

but I'm not that confident in it.

[Thetargos]

I really don't understand why they don't just release the WoW Linux client (unsupported, if they want)... work already been done, community would love it, game with 10.000.000 players of which they will be at least some thousand Linux gamers...

Somewhere in the order of about 100K according to some figures, for WoW alone.

Michael, if that is indeed true (and having into account, again, that one of their Lead Software Engineers pioneered SDL), that is the more feasible. If there is one other company I'd LOVE to see their games on Linux, that'd be Blizzard. Forget Valve, forget 3D Realms, forget BioWare, even... The kind of stuff that Blizzard could bring to the table is just... amazing... In my utopian world they'd also release the code for the Warcraft II, Diablo and Starcraft engines, so that there could be Linux binaries for these games (you'd still had to have the original title to play these), alas... Not very likely to happen... ever.

At any rate, I'd love to see at least Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 native Linux clients.

[d2kx]

I really don't understand why they don't just release the WoW Linux client (unsupported, if they want)... work already been done, community would love it, game with 10.000.000 players of which they will be at least some thousand Linux gamers...

[Michael]

For what it's worth, there has been a Blizzard employee with the ATI Linux beta program now for some time at least.