There is one incentive why publishers are so keen on pre-order campaigns these days, that didn't get mentioned in the editorial. In this time and age what matters most when launching a creative product of any kind are sales ranks, e.g. the ones on Amazon etc. So what's the best way to get into these lists? Selling a lot, and I mean a LOT of units right on Day 1. And guess what - that's exactly what pre-orders do! They accumulate a lot of orders for a publisher they can ship to customers on launch day and they will all be counted as a "Day 1 sale" on these platforms, catapulting the product right into the bestseller lists for that period and gaining exposure for it, resulting in even more sales. In this time and age, it's basically a required part of a successful marketing campaign.

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I super-rarely buy any full-price DLC and prefer to wait until they are on sale instead. This time I did. I guess that tells enough how much I love this game. :)

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Quoting: Mountain ManThe problem with their "no reason to ship a DX12 game" argument is that Microsoft has invested tremendous resources in DX12 (and DirectX in general) and won't let it go without a fight, and many programmers are already familiar with DirectX while they would have to learn Vulkan from scratch.

This is IT, where technology and skills decay faster than in any other profession. A programmer who's not able and willing to let go of an outdated tech and learn to use a more modern approach isn't worth their salt, IMHO.

Yes, there might be some management inertia to overcome, particularly in the big studios. But if (and that's how it looks like), Vulcan is indeed superior to DX12, they will eventually be forced by the market to use it whether or not they like it. Microsoft can whine all they want, but in the end players want good looking games.

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Does this game come with an editor like NWN then? Or just a DM tool to run the official campaign with?

On topic, I rather have them work on the game for another month and release something good rather than pulling an Ubisoft and release pre-Alpha quality software.

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Am I the only who finds it completely hilarious that the studios don't make the developer tools available to the one platform that has the greatest percentage of developer users of all OSes by far?

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Normally I feel at least a trace of sadness when a company states that they won't support Linux anytime soon or ever. In this particular case, all I did was shrug and thinking "Yeah, so what?". EA hasn't released a game in a while I was remotely interested in. Probably that's because they haven't released any halfway original game in like a decade. All they do is churning out yearly updates of the same old concepts and add a few new explosions (or updated player names for their sports series). Even Bioware (which I used to be huge fan of) has been completely assimilated into the EA way. I got Inquisition for Christmas, played it for a few hours and then put it away. The story just couldn't hook me at all and the gameplay was basically the same boring dumbed-down clickfest they got bashed for Dragon Age 2 already.

That being said, I still could giggle that a fat-cat company like EA isn't able to write a cross-platform engine when much smaller studios can and have done. EA's revenue is so large that 5% more revenue amounts to a fairly large sum. Should think it's profitable to do even then. But then, since EA's only field of actual innovation is developing intrusive and annoying DRM software, they probably think we don't want to have that on Linux anyway. Rightfully so.

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Good news. Among all these "Developing for Linux isn't worth it" debates, I was wondering if they had given up on Linux, too. Going to back this one, then. :)

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Quoting: Maquis196So many time consuming games being ported, can barely keep up. Still, should have finished Shadow of Mordor by the weekend so can pick something up next.

Also, quite a few games I already own. Ah well, time to buy another copy off Feral and donate!

For real. I never thought I'd ever have more Linux games than I can play. oO

And yeah, poor Feral won't earn much on this one, it seems, as many of us already have it. But this just means it's a great game. :)

*still has her fingers crossed to see Skyrim on Linux one day*

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Shadowrun HK for me.

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Compared to the earlier statement, this makes much more sense now. Everything is more difficult if you do it for the first time. I guess once devs are getting used to Linux, they might even find it's a great platform to develop on and for.

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