Waiting for second generation, price drop to 500€ and at least few good games to play around in Linux. Not having time for VR isolation anyway :)

HTC is very silent about next gen though. However price drop might indicate their moves to show or at least drop info about next gen soon enough.

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As space sim fan this is one game I am very curious about - devs seem to have strong grasp what they want to achieve. Added to wishlist, might plunge into buying it when having more free time to play around.

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Quoting: GuestHLSL support means less work for porting games from DirectX?
https://youtu.be/bjE-sCkgC7o?t=8m1s [External Link]

They would generate Vulkan shader language using HLSL thus decreasing time required for porting. Or I got it wrong :)

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Nice vote of confidence towards Vulkan API support for Linux.

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Development of Metal most likely was dictated by Apple's hardware design, not Vulkan in particular. Apple sees Android as threat and as Android is one of reason's of Vulkan practical existence, Apple throwing a towel at the feet of Khronos seems logical. Also no one can really force them to act differently, as they aren't monopoly in any market.

While Vulkan not being available on MacOS/iOS is sad, I really don't buy Linux gaming as being one of reasons of Apple behaviour. Let's be honest - they care only about Android.

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Quoting: JanIf that is true, allow me to ask you a question: Who is developing the official NVidia Web Driver for macOS to support their latest GPUs like the GTX 1080 if Apple prevents them to do so?

Apple does allow only those API it supports. Ergo no OpenGL support beyond 4.1

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Yeah PC gaming includes huge casual gaming behemoths like MMOs, F2P titles, etc. I am ready to bet titles like War Thunder, WoW, etc. takes a 10B a year in total. Ironically enough, both titles work on Linux without big problems.

This also shows a bit of shallowness of "AAA gaming doesn't come to Linux, we are kaput" argument. AAA gaming is high stakes development, if someone ports something it is a miracle, because even if we had 1/10 of Windows market it still wouldn't be enough to justify majority of AAA games being ported. I mean, name Linux gamers interested in FIFA 2020 or whatever next title will be.

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Quoting: EhvisFrankly, the biggest problem for Linux as a platform appears to be the support problem. Of course this has two sides. Linux builds sometimes have problems that are not present in Windows builds. But the bigger problem still seems to be the dependency compatibility problem between all the different distros and installations. Even though most technically only support Ubuntu and/or SteamOS, there are still a lot of people that will dump distro specific problems in the support forums and reviews. If this problem isn't solved in some way, it could be a real danger for continued support by developers.

There's very interesting feedback about Linux as being problematic. Biggest problem is tiny size of market share of course. However, putting that aside, there are some some issues that are not exactly solveable by gamers. For example, lot of middleware is just plainly broken on Linux. It is either old port, buggy port, or just bugs due of not maintanance of specific piece of software. And game development lives and dies by support from middleware and engine vendors. Most successful ports and happy Linux devs come from stable, well working libraries.

Of course there's part Linux developers can contribute as well - unifying APIs, well working drivers, etc. Thankfully, situation there is improving thanks to Valve, RedHat, AMD, Intel and other contributors.

I think what should be understood that a) Linux support is not that complex or hard as years ago b) there's solid vendors behind this willing to support game development on Linux and c) it is constantly improving and growing.

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[quote=Jan]

Quoting: TheBardMafia 3 might have not been an excellent game, but Aspyr released it for macOS only, no Linux support. The same for Jade Empire Special Edition. It's on Mac and iOS -- no Linux version.

Maybe they are just very good at marketing research because I highly doubt I would buy Mafia III after all let's play videos I have seen for it.

Aspyr has always been *very* selective about their ports to Linux. However, all their ports have been quite popular and I remember CivV being very good seller for them. I don't that has changed or there's any difference with their approach. I think they know their market rather well.

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Quoting: Aresofirst A for big budget, second A for big dev and publisher, and third, it was once, A for quality.
So, AAA games tend to have a lot content, quality models, animations, voice overs, videocuts and so on...

Sure, but then disqualify PC altogether, because best AAA games are on consoles these days. PC market is big, sure, but console market just guarantees that sweet sweet revenue. There's good reason why Arkham Knight was canned for PC altogether.

I think this discussion which rages now for years is basically about "is this enough for Linux desktop to exist and grow?" and we have different opinions where this growth should/can come from. You think Windows gamers suddenly will switch over to Linux for some frame per second or other reason....not really. I never bought that argument.

For me Linux gaming is - does it offer enough entertainment and fun for Linux user NOT to use Windows dual boot or switch to Windows altogether? I would argue it does for many, many users.

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