Quoting: m2mg2

Quoting: denyasisI am in the same boat with exclusives, I think they are a bad idea, but I seen how they can work to the advantage of the console company.

Anecdotally, my co-workers who are console gamers all own multiple consoles, specifically due to exclusivity. I've actually heard this exact conversation many times:

"Hey bro, you should go get [console X] so we can play [game y] together!"
and usually right after payday, some one comes up and says "Hey I got the console and game, wanna play?"

Now yes, they just dropped several hundred dollars for to play one game, but as calvin pointed out, they now have a system guaranteed to play every game released for that console and they are unlikely to only ever purchase one game over the lifetime of the console ("Hey bro, [games y 2] just came out, are you getting it?).

While it's just my personal experience, I can see how exclusives to work for the console company from a business point of view. I still think they are a bad idea, especially for linux. I think our user-base is too small to make it a sound financial strategy.

Yes, they are good for console companies. They are bad for everyone else though.

The developer/publishers game ends up with a smaller player base (not everyone that wants to play the game is willing to or has the money for multiple consoles) and users either miss out or have to buy a whole additional piece of hardware. You double your console spending budget that would have been better used buying more games. The games are already going to be worthless when the next generation console come out, now not only do your games have a lifespan but you have less of them because you had to buy a whole different console.

ok, lets assume that your most profitable game ever made 200 millions in profit, but each new game you made, you sold less than the previous. (eg: 200, 180, 150, 110....) and you reinvest allmost everything that you made in profit to make an new game...
if some one off you 1 billion for exclusivity, would you refuse?
companies that have an exclusivity deal have nothing to lose with the deal, nothing. if they sell 0 copies they already made profit.
if they sell, even better.
companies that make consoles give more money to the game developer than the game will make in profit, why? because they will help sell the console, so the install base of the console grow and they make more money in each game sold for the platform.
you could argue that gamers are the ones who lose, but i will discuss this a bit:
what would happen if nintendo didnt make exclusives for their consoles anymore nor paid for thirdyparty exclusives? sony did the same, microsoft the same with xbox.
what would happen?
nintendo would not sell any console, nor sony neither microsoft.
all games would be done to windows, some to mac, and a few to linux.

we wouldnt have an world without exclusives because windows would still have 7000 exclusive games (only counting steam) 4000 that have an version for win and mac and the 3000 ones left that have an version for linux (mostly indies) would also be avaliable for win/mac so most of people wouldnt consider swich for linux anyway.
as you can see, even on an windows without exclusives, we would still have exclusives due to direcx or marketshare (companys that dont want to support, because the cost of support an platform is greater than the profit from it)

and different from what the stupid people who say: "pc master racers" think, if PC won, they wouldnt be able to play all their games on windows.
why? becasue microsoft would do special versions such as "windows home, premium, ultimate" where only the most expensive can play all the games (they would do exclusivity deals anyway)
or things like "buy the ultimate to unlock the full potential of your computer!" for those who want to play on ultra.

at least with consoles around, microsoft have an reason to keep improving their products instead of let then years without any major evolution while they try to dominate other markets (as they did with the internet explorer)

so an world without exclusives would never exist, if we insist in pursue this what we will got instead is an world with thousands of windows exclusives and no other option to gaming (no nintendo, no sony) if we were lucky enough to microsoft not doing what nintendo did when they were the major gaming platform: if you want to make games to our console, you can only make games for our platform.

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Quoting: ElectricPrismThis article outlines a term that I've created to describe the situation -- LinuxTax™
.

for those games with an 10% performance difference, i agree that the "Linuxtax™" solves the problem, but for those who perform 50/80% worse as said by another comment, i doubt it.

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What's interesting is that they didn't use SteamOS for the demo, what are your thoughts as to why they used Kubuntu?

maybe they want to show that:
it will work on other linux distributions too, such as ubuntu, not only SteamOS.
and it will work on other DE too, not only Unity, so they show'd KDE instead of Unity.

or maybe the Steam Machines arent powerfull enough, so if they used the SteamOS, it could imply that it would run on any steam machine...

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now we're talking!

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Quoting: t3gI hope this developer realizes that Epic is going to take his code, lock it down, not give it back to the community (it's not GPL), and then make millions of dollars from publishers while he gets $0 and has to resort to the good will of a "community" to fund his efforts to help Epic keep their code proprietary.

If the code was going to remain open for everyone to use, then his efforts aren't wasted as others can learn from it and use that knowledge for their own games. But since he insists on contributing to the existence of non-free software free of charge, he's a fool.

except that he is charging for it, and will not receive $0 if we donate?

the issue is, if we dont do anything, unreal games performance on linux will suck, if we do, we will be helping an proprietary software company.

either you let the windows proprietary windows and its ecosystem dominate the market, or you let epic do that, there is no perfect solution here, but an double edge.

if you care so much about this, why you buy proprietary games on steam (that is also proprietary) anyway?

linux need good game ports, otherwise it will not get new users.

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"it's looking like Steam Machines may stall hard. So what is out now may end up being all there ever is. But I sure would like to be proven wrong on that."
[edit] i forgot to comment that.
alienware relased an new model recently so its very unlikely.

"Good products are what should drive sales"
in a perfect world, consumers are smart and do the right decision, but in a perfect world they already use linux on desktop anyway.
in the real world, companies put 75% of their bugdet on maerket instead of Research/Development, only 25% goes to R/D, Q/A etc.
if an good product were what drive sales, gamecube would sell more than ps2, it was stronger.
people would be using linux because it have an better performance (but since they arent, we get poor ports and poor performance as an result)

"Also being released after Windows can be turned around - majority of casual games really don't care when games are released. "
80% of the sales of an AAA are done in the first 2 months after the relase.

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" This has the potential to be a massive selling point over this last console generation, which was underpowered on release."
except that they will relase PS4 Neo and Xbox Scorpio, i'm the only one here who read the news?

"Customers do not want exclusives. Customers want good games. Console vendors, and Microsoft, try and use good games as exclusives to force customers to buy their product over competitors. Exclusives hurt customers. However, I don't have a problem with games releasing on one platform first and then others (I think a year is to long though, 3 months or 6 at most is reasonable). Fanboys may want exclusives so that they have something to hold over fanboys (or even regular owners) of other systems. These sick individuals are an extremely small portion of customers however and are unimportant. They can love their chosen platform without exclusives and they will."
1)exclusives drive sales, sales bring thirdyparty support, wich lead to good games on the platform.

2)exclusives do hurt customers, but we can't chose to live in a world without exclusives, its an utopy because¹, the real choice is: have tens exclusives and all thirdypart games? or have no exclusives and only an small subset of the thirdyparty games with an inferior performance due to poor ports?
its not about a world with exclusives or a world without, its a world with 5000 windows exclusives because valve refuse to do 1, or a world with ~10 windows exclusives, ~10 linux exclusives everything else multiplat.
and in the later on those exclusivty contracts may expire within time.

its not about being a fanboy, if an product have everything that the other have+something its a better product. if both platforms have exclusives they pick the one with the best exclusives.

"I don't see new AAA games coming anytime soon with the apparent stagnation of Linux steam usage, judged by Steam stats."
looks like we will receive a bunch of games at the end of this year

"Steam boxes have the advantage of using a free OS, something XBox doesn't have and it's been wasted."
Microsoft dont have to pay thenselfs for the operating system.

"So instead of having my baby crying I have chosen to buy him an Xbox one "
why not an ps4?

"(Yes, KSP is planned, but we are playing it for years now on Linux). And these are serious, big games, that you can justify to call AAA."
no they're not
"Please folks, just drop using this term (AAA). It's practically useless because it's highly ambiguous and confusing without explaining every time what's implied. "
games that cost up to 200 millions to make and put 50~75% of their budget on marketing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(video_game_industry) [External Link]

also the preice is wrong.
people chose PS4 over XboxOne because it had an better hardware and they thought it would be the best place for multiplatform games, but they change their mind and pick an xboxOne instead when microsoft drop the price by 50USD! that is how much they care about graphics.
sony had to do the same to keep leading.

also:
i dont give a shit about the amount of games avaliable, the ones that i want to play arent avaliable, and i dont see why should i put money on it, if valve isnt willing to put.
every company put 50~75% of the cost of production of a product on marketing and only 25 in R/D, valve didnt put a 1 cent on marketing.

i will keep buying all linux games that interests me (even a little bit) at full price and everything else on high sales only after i finish my linux collection, but i will not wait forever for the linux year on desktop or console to play the games i want.
im waiting since 2008 and the marketshare didnt change, i hoped it would with steamMachines at least on gaming, but it didnt happen, consoles are the market to go, the market that change every 5 years and nothing!

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" It doesn't help some sites, like the one Liam refers to have done a hatchet job either intentionally, "
the intention does not matter, the fact that they did it does.
just think as any normal gamer would think:
they probably never heard of Steam Machines, there is NO advantage in then and the media coverage don't help.

no matter if ts ars fault, valve fault or the hardware manufacturers fault or the poorly optimized ports fault.
its not a matter of who is fault for the failure, the fact is, the steam machines failed, and until valve change their strategy nothing will change.

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Quoting: iniudan

Quoting: TheRiddickSteamOS is still not ready for mainstream consumption. Missing drivers, bad driver optimizations, library file issues, AMD is still largely missing for sysreq on software. And then there is the MAJOR AAA titles still not wanting to port to Linux (where is my Skyrim and Fallout4?).

Maybe some of those issues will be sorted out in the next 12 months I dunno. But Valve KNOWS what must be done to make it successful.

Indeed lot of issue, should be solved when game developer use of current gen of graphic API become generalized. Currently the only Vulkan based game I know are Ashes of the Singularity (it supposed to get ported to Linux) and DOTA2 (which is currently in a beta release for the Vulkan port).

the is the talos principle too

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i can't believe how blind optimistic people are...

"SteamOS is still a "beta" it's not a released product "
the SteamOS is not an relased product but its embed at an relased product, i'm the only one who see an issue in sell an piece of hardware in which the OS embed to it is not ready for relase even 7 months after they start selling the hardware?
any consumer would go nuts with something like that.

(the steam machines are basically the same thing and to sell 500,000 is great imo!).
500,000 is the number of CONTROLLERS sold not the number of machines, read the news before comment on it.

"It took them years to get to where Steam is now"
yes, the issue is, people purchased pcs because they need/want browse the web, write documents, listen to music watch videos and play was an plus, and they could do those things regardless of the sucess or not of steam.
on consols on the other hand, people buy then to play and they are useless if they cant meet this, no one will buy an machine and wait years before it become usefull for anything, especially if they can just install windows on it to play more things with better performance as a lot of those people are doing.

"It will probably take them even longer to push SteamOS and Steam Machines through to where they can actually compete with the PS4 and Xbox One"
except that we would be at PS5 or PS6 by then...

"as was said they (MS/Sony) have 3>4 generations of system to have gained a market"
PS1 sold 100M units at the end of its generation, it won the consol market at its first gen, the first xbox sold 24M at the end of its gen, and at 7 months after relase im pretty sure it had sold more than 500K units. (that being optmistic assuming all 500K controlers are bundled with Steam Machines)

"Has everyone got the VR headsets yet?"
we dont know if VR will be a thing at all.

" is everyone playing games at 4k on their Xboxs or PS4s? "
XboxOne and PS4 cant do 4K that is why they will relase PS4 Neo and another XboxOne, every gamer know they will relase this, except if they are living in a cave on the last 2 months because the media cant shut up and talk about something else.

and Steam machines that arent tied to this generation count didnt drop the price yet, PS4 and XboxOne did.

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