Quoting: kuhpunktBut what would the point be? What's the difference to a normal computer now? Consoles are made so that you use their OS/store. Again, what would be the incentive? What could you do with it that you can't do with a PC right now? Exclusivity would be silly and pretty much impossible.

Hmmm, well, presumably it would be a computer, running SteamOS, with all VR-oriented software installed and running smoothly, using components (particularly but not only the graphics card) that were known to be capable of handling VR stuff, and drivers vetted to not be glitchy with VR thingies. When you fired up Steam, it would default to showing VR things first. It might have a few of the most popular VR titles pre-installed. It would come with relevant hardware for VR things--headset, glove-y things and whatever--again, already with drivers, ready to work out of the box, and with user-friendly configuration software installed and easily discoverable.

The result wouldn't technically be any different from buying a PC and VR hardware and installing all the stuff and maybe fighting with the drivers and glitches and whatever, and then realizing you had to upgrade something because your PC wasn't really ready for VR. But the experience could be significantly different. Consoles are technically just a locked-down form of personal computer which you get for cheap and then pay a bit extra for every time you buy a game. Kind of a lousy deal, and yet there they are making a killing.

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Quoting: stretch611

Quoting: Purple Library GuyMinor pet peeve . . . none of the games literally flew off the digital shelves. You're thinking of games that figuratively flew off the digital shelves. :P

Maybe they literally teleported off the digital shelves straight to the computers. :P

I believe they literally replicated, then teleported the clones.

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Quoting: HoriValve should invest in *proper* VR games, and then release a new console focused on VR, *made by Valve* not third parties, and based on SteamOS. They should, this way, be able to "annex" the VR gaming market while it's young and easy to do so.
Obviously that console would also be able to play regular games as well - kinda like a Steam machine but it would be focused on VR.

And let me say this again: It should be made by Valve. If other manufacturers also want to make one, fine. But there should always be the option of buying an official, Valve-made unit - which should be used as a reference by the other manufacturers, by defining a standard. Kinda like how we have official Nvidia (Founder's Edition) cards, and we also have ASUS, MSI, etc cards based on it.

Indeed, kind of like how back in the day, there were "IBM PCs" and there were clones. That worked out pretty well for the PC architecture (not sure how well IBM made out from it; I hear they let some young shark named Gates make all the software profit).

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Quoting: 14

Quoting: ShmerlPeople don't use something because of exclusives, but because the platform offers something useful to them.

Call me shallow

You're shallow!

. . . What? But he told me to!

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Quoting: jensI guess I wont be popular with my opinion, but I hope that Steam Play/Proton will take that much steam that wrapping Wine/Steam on windows via Lutris will soon no longer be relevant. The reason for my opinion here is that I still think that gaming on Linux will only improve in the long term when Linux hits a significantly higher market share than the current 1%. Playing windows games outside of Proton does not increases Linux visibility.

This is just my opinion, by all means everyone is free to use Linux as one wishes. Note also that I don't talk about making Lutris irrelevant, I know that it wraps more than just Wine.

Mm . . . well, I like Proton (in theory, haven't used it yet), and I don't actually use GOG much, but even for me I have a few games that aren't from Steam, which Lutris will probably at some point help me play. Like I have this old Sins of a Solar Empire CD which I never got working back in the day . . .

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Minor pet peeve . . . none of the games literally flew off the digital shelves. You're thinking of games that figuratively flew off the digital shelves. :P

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The surprise point for me is about the 3/120 top VR titles . . .
There were 120 VR titles?! Who knew?

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But what about all the hardcore children complaining that the frame rate is slower on Linux?!

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Quoting: BeamboomAnd nobody will jump to Linux for gaming (emphasis added--Purple) just because we can emulate Windows. That's just simply not gonna happen.

We have no realistic prospects of people jumping to Linux for gaming (barring some kind of snazzy category-blurring Steam Machine someday). But we have prospects of people jumping to Linux despite gaming, for other features, and those prospects become better as the degree of gaming sacrifice shrinks. It has already shrunk a lot, but as you yourself point out, after the big push around Steam Machines the level of releases for Linux was stagnating. Proton shrinking that disadvantage, as felt by a typical computer user, subtracts some level of barrier to adoption.

People whose use of computers is based around hard core gaming will be among the last to migrate to Linux. I figure if we somehow got to 25% desktop share and Vulkan dominance, basically all the games would be built natively for Linux despite Proton and all the drivers would work fast and all the engines would treat Linux as first class citizen; at that point hard core gamers going to Linux to game because they thought Linux performance was better could become a thing.

There are two things influencing Linux adoption. One is the features of the OS for a user; use-cases vary hugely. Over time, the disadvantages have been shrinking and the advantages growing, so that Linux would be a comparable or superior option for more and more users. Proton could definitely be a component in continuing to shrink the disadvantages. The other is big pushes from outfits with money and muscle; I hate to say this, but it's true--Linux can be awesome but will not get far if someone isn't shoving it hard through big sales channels and backing it with marketing. But such pushes won't work if users have to give up too much. If Linux has too many drawbacks for most users, we have no prospects even if someone wants to back us.

Right now at this moment, Valve is working pretty consistently to shrink the disadvantages of Linux use, at least for gaming. On the other hand, arguably the outfit quietly pushing actual Linux adoption the most is Google, with their Chromebooks, which are gradually becoming beefier and softening their "everything is the browser" schtick. The things have already been selling well as basically crippleware, cheapo little laptops to just browse and do basic things with. But it's gotten people used to them, used to the idea of having a computer that isn't Windows and isn't a Mac. At this point, now that people are used to them, they could probably build a market for Chromebooks that weren't crippled, and there's some indication that they're trying. At some point we're going to start to see "Chromebooks" which are actually honest-to-God general-use computers. They will probably run Linux software (I mean, you can already make 'em do it, but I'm talking designed to out of the box). Consider the following: A "Chromebook" with gaming-laptop level power, with Steam installed, playing Linux-native and Proton games along with the usual suite of Linux software like Libreoffice etc.

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Quoting: fnordianslipNothing gets installed for me when I download the game on Linux. Guess they haven't ironed out the details yet.

Maybe they're just not feeding you.

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