Sure, private company, selfish, gaming is not same as hardware, closed garden etc. BUT let's not forget:

- Sony had their own distro, as mentioned:

Quoting: LightkeyFor the younger folks around here, Sony has already released their own Linux distribution before.

- Installing Gentoo on PS4 was a thing for a while [External Link].
- As PS5 came out, we may not get the console, but controllers were in stores, and a Sony employee contributed the controller driver for the kernel [External Link]
- Due to Sony's open device program, Xperia phones have been the de-facto standard for Linux-based mobile OS, especially Sailfish which today supports up to Xperia 1 II.

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Maybe mainstream devs don't care so much because they have a huge market anyway. Kind of the same problem as with anti-cheat software, why should Riot care about a few hundreds of players anyway.

But for indie developers I think it's a different story. Suddenly this console gives their games more appeal, and I think these games give the console more appeal.

When I look at the Steam catalogue and look at games like Tooth and Tail, The Riftbreaker, Blasphemous, Dead Cells, Hollow Knight.. in fact all indie "something-Knight"'s, etc.
I see more appeal for playing them in a handheld console and at the same time, I think the console increases the appeal of these games.
I mean I would play most them in my phone if I could, and if my phone had a gamepad.

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Quoting: BlackBloodRumCrash Bandicoot? Wasn't that Naughty Dog? (owned by sony?) :unsure:

As far as I know, latest ones:
- Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (Activision, to be acquired)
- Crash Bandicoot: On the Run! (King, to be acquired as well)

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Quoting: KimyrielleOk, and tbh, is anybody really going to miss what was one of the most toxic companies to work for in America?

Other than that, geesh, did REALLY nobody in charge ever read a Economics textbook to realize that market concentration is bad? Will this stop only when there is only MS and Sony and their two consoles left? Does nobody realize that for a free-market economy to work, it takes a think called competition. And does nobody realize that if companies can spend that kind of money to buy all their competitors, we're not taxing corporations nearly high enough?

Hear, hear.

I didn't see positives in what is a creative enterprise (making games) when one has such a boss, and now even less positives when one has such a boss who also has a boss.

I would like to see more opportunities for small indie developers. I am hoping that the Steam Deck makes certain games more attractive, like Tooth and Tail, Blasphemous, etc... and on the other hand, looking at games like that makes (for me) the Steam Deck more attractive.

In the meantime, the list of intellectual property that would be in the hands of Microsoft after this merge is chilling:

Call of Duty
Diablo
Warcraft
Overwatch
Starcraft
Crash Bandicoot
Guitar Hero
Tony Hawk Pro Skater
Fallout
Doom
Quake
Psychonauts
Elder Scrolls
Prey
Wolfenstein
Dishonored
Minecraft
Candy Crush

Not to forget the XBox franchises:

Halo, Forza, Fable, Gears, Perfect Dark, Age of Empires ...

There is grounds for some lawyers to at least look into this.

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It is big news, yes, but it's hard to foresee a positive impact.

I would rather have game makers get more independence, creatively speaking. That went already downhill during the Activision merge, so this is looking less promising.

Pretty likely, that they got them on the cheap: no presence in the games awards this year, no blizzcon this year. It is a very good move by Microsoft. Reminds me of Nokia...

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Is it perhaps a little odd to be so excited by a mouse?

Not odd at all. Intellimouse 3 came out in 2006-ish and since then the only serious alternative to it have been the Zowies, but even then I feel like some players have stuck to Intellimouse Classic until something like Vaxxee came out.

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Now I want to give the counter-point: what if this has more impact on Linux users than anything else, at the end of the day?

After all, nobody's got the consumer Steam Deck in their hands yet. And there is a good chance that there's so much demand that Valve cannot fabricate enough consoles anyway. Hell, it's been difficult to meet demand even for niche stuff like the Aya Neo.

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Yet another good example that champions the strength and resilience of a good community. These people are giving me vibes of sort of what OpenRA has been for Command and Conquer.
Understanding something like the fact that a game like this is meant to show battles between huge armies, and that should perform well, and without crashes, I mean something that one would think of as a basic requirement... and yet for some reason there are so many commercial projects that miss it...

Quoting: TheRiddickSeems like they've achieve more then what Ashes of the Singularity can do

Not so long ago (in RTS time) the BAR community organised a RTS triathlon [External Link] event together with the communities of Supreme Commander: FA and Planetary Annihilation: Titans. Casters, top players and developers from the three games mixed to try out the others.
Besides bringing the communities together, it was excellent as a showcase. You get to see where each game is at, and what happens when you try to cast, stream, team play, coach others, etc. My sensation from that event was that Planetary Annihilation still takes the cake (for me), but I can see that it's just a matter of time that BAR catches up in quality and you can see how/why that will happen.

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I have to agree with the comment on lack of innovation and AoE4 (which looks great to me) is a perfect example. The TLDR is that "it's not so easy to re-skin a successful game". But it's the nature of the beast, and let me explain myself:

AoE4 is up on the list of the Steam top-sellers with already over 10000, very positive reviews. Before making the game, you knew that there is a certain hundreds of thousands of copies sold that you can count on, just for the fact that your game is called "Age of Empires 4". Now what you need to do, mostly, is not "screwing it up" by deviating too much from whatever it is that made AoE2 successful in the first place.

Now as I say this, it could be that even the small deviation from AoE2 to AoE4 is too much.
I can see the initial peak of AoE4 players almost halving this week (it's now getting closer to half the all-time peak) and potentially those players going back to AoE2. And the player count of AoE2 eventually surpassing AoE4, as they already did with AoE3. So, as unoriginal as this game looks, it's possible that Microsoft will not succeed in convincing the player base to switch to the newer AoE4 either, as they couldn't with Age of Mythology, as they couldn't with AoE3.

Relic themselves, again I think they have done a great job, but we know they have innovated more than this in the past, and if you read AoE4 reviews you will that as well in comments such as "where is feature X that is in Relic's game Y?". One possible answer is that the game is made to specification, it's not the time to reinvent the wheel, it's time to give people what they want. Like if you made yet another Marvel movie.

What's important in this news, is that this is the only AAA RTS game that has come out in the last 11 years (roughly) and that it became playable on Linux already in a matter of weeks. AND it's a MICROSOFT GAME, FFS!

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Liam now this is too much RTS and Linux that I have no choice but to become a GamingOnLinux supporter.
I was trying to be a miser about it and not be a supporter but you keep bringing good news about RTS games, first Age of Darkness, now this. I can't take this anymore.
Now I'm not sure if Microsoft deserve my money but certainly you do.

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