Quoting: ShmerlNice. As you can see, it's way higher than so called Steam survey, which only highlights, that the later is pretty useless. It all depends on the game, and I'd say on developers and their engagement with Linux community. I'd be also interested in some numbers from inXile and Obsidian, who like Beamdog release cross platform from day one.

Also, I'm somewhat surprised that MacOS sales stay high, despite bitrot of the system, and Apple basically abandoning their own desktop.

Apple is not abandoning the Mac at all.

They have just announced the iMac Pro with Xeon CPUs, external GPU support, Metal 2 and a new high-end Mac Pro coming in 2018/2019 along with new Cinema 5K Displays.

Performance of the latest Metal-optimised games on macOS is on par with Windows (according to Brad Oliver from Feral) and the API is finally in a mature enough state. Apple is also investing heavily in AR and VR (Steam VR support was shown during the WWDC keynote).

It would be awesome if Linux gaming was comparable to the Mac market regarding sales numbers.

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Quoting: razing32

Quoting: JanBreak those numbers down by title, genre, etc. Subtract subscription based or free to play/IAP driven MMOs, visual novels and stuff like Hearthstone or LoL and then compare the numbers again.

So remove all the huge PC exclusives from the word go.
So far so fair , right ?

Huge AAA open world titles and immersive experiences like Uncharted, Zelda or Assassin's Creed could not exist without the console market. And those titles are what "hardcore" gamers consider AAA and big teams and studios are built for.

And all the games from before you wanted excluded are made by an indie team in a garage ?
Also what is a "hardcore" gamer nowadays ? Pro players ? People who invest time and money into gaming ?

EDIT:
Misread your comment. On a personal note do not care about sports - so no knowledge in that field.

Don't be fooled by total numbers. The big franchises make much more money on consoles than on all PC platforms combined, that's why they are being build with the PS4 as their lead platform (Xbox 360 in the last generation).

I try not to be. I could be in the wrong.
But if by big franchises you mean the console exclusives which are by design anti consumer since they are locked down to one platform and one publisher then yes , those by deign will be made for ONE and ONLY one platform in mind. ( Until the publisher wants more money and port it to PC that is )

Of course, games like World of Warcraft or League of Legends are build by large teams with big budgets.

But be honest: Think about PC gaming without Blizzard, LoL and the gazillions of Asian F2P shenanigans. What's left? Besides AA houses like Paradox and maybe 20 million active Steam users with a diverse gaming library (even though Valve claims they have more than 150 million accounts, but not daily users)?

The PC market is huge and healthy, but it's not the driver of the gaming industry.

GTA V. Call of Duty. Forza. FIFA. Madden. Metroid. Mario. Zelda. Pokemon etc.

Without PS4, 3DS, Xbox and now the Nintendo Switch those titles could not exist. Platform holders need exclusives and a diverse library to sell units. That's the main reason why SteamOS was never going to be a 'huge' success: Valve never planned to put any exclusive title on it. Half-Life 3 only on SteamOS? Millions of gamers would dual-boot to Linux in a heartbeat -- but that won't happen.

You might not like those business antics, but that's how you make money (and create some excellent titles).

By the way: I forgot to mention one PC game on par with the highest quality console titles: The Witcher 3 (if you study the history of CD Project RED that's another anomaly).

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Quoting: PeciskYeah 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.

Read between the lines of Feral's statement: They are very selective about which titles they will bring to Linux. I guess it will be mainly "PC-like" RTS -- Dawn of War III or XCOM --, and less third-person action/adventure titles.

None of Feral's family friendly Mac games like the LEGO or Sonic games come to Linux.

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Quoting: razing32

Quoting: Jan

Quoting: razing32

Quoting: PeciskSure, 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.

Sorry but I strongly disagree with that statement.
We have overall more exclusives on PC than there are on consoles and way better backwards compatibility.

What is "best" AAA games ?
Are you going by scores ? Sales ? What ?

There is not even one title on PC with production values comparable to Uncharted 4, Horizon: Zero Dawn or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. 60+ $ console games and/or free to play with tons of IAP titles make the big money nowadays.

Steam sales and the "won't buy unless it's under 20 bucks" attitude could not sustain the multi-million budget AAA productions of the big publishers.

Yes , too bad we are worth more than 5 times more :

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Break those numbers down by title, genre, etc. Subtract subscription based or free to play/IAP driven MMOs, visual novels and stuff like Hearthstone or LoL and then compare the numbers again.

Huge AAA open world titles and immersive experiences like Uncharted, Zelda or Assassin's Creed could not exist without the console market. And those titles are what "hardcore" gamers consider AAA and big teams and studios are built for.

What about the big annual sports titles like FIFA (or Madden in the US)? No chance without PlayStation or Xbox!

Don't be fooled by total numbers. The big franchises make much more money on consoles than on all PC platforms combined, that's why they are being build with the PS4 as their lead platform (Xbox 360 in the last generation).

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Quoting: razing32

Quoting: PeciskSure, 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.

Sorry but I strongly disagree with that statement.
We have overall more exclusives on PC than there are on consoles and way better backwards compatibility.

What is "best" AAA games ?
Are you going by scores ? Sales ? What ?

There is not even one title on PC with production values comparable to Uncharted 4, Horizon: Zero Dawn or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. 60+ $ console games and/or free to play with tons of IAP titles make the big money nowadays.

Steam sales and the "won't buy unless it's under 20 bucks" attitude could not sustain the multi-million budget AAA productions of the big publishers.

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Quoting: TheBard

Quoting: JanSorry for being so negative, but apart from Vulkan's great improvements I don't see a realistic chance for AAA Linux gaming in the foreseeable future.

Yes porters need money for the work they do, that's completely obvious. But i don't think the solution is to rebuy games but to boycot games not on Linux. Rebuying means your money still go to one Windows/Mac sales, wheras boycoting reduce the Win/Mac share. We now have lots of games on Linux, if you want to buy a Wind/Mac title, just look if there is a similar title available on Linux.

I don't think Aspyr left Linux, there recent titles are on Linux. They just release less games.

Mafia 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.

Bloober Team's A/AA horror titles and other Aspyr published indie projects are a different story.

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Come on, Pecisk, be real: We buy Feral's ports, we pay a few bucks more in Humble Bundles, but we are a tiny group of passionate people within a niche market. Because of us, no publisher would even consider a port of a game. +1 Linux won't do it for the top dogs, even really cool and dedicated people like the CD Project/GOG guys have to consider economic reasons and viability. The Witcher 1 eON port was released for macOS, but not for Linux, even though the effort would have been quite low.

I don't have proof, but I'm pretty sure neither Aspyr or Feral could pay their bills and salaries as a Linux only publisher.

Some AAA gaming is fine for you, but it's not enough to convince any halfway serious gamer outside our *nix bubble to switch to Linux.

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A groundhog day discussion: Read Feral's comments and find your own conclusion. It's a myth that Linux gamers in general are more willing to spend money on a Linux-specific product. We've had this discussion on GoL about people complaining to re-buy a Linux port or if a game isn't SteamPlay from day one (or the piracy topic where some users promote it to avoid Steam or any form of DRM, which is just plain stupid and ignorant regarding AAA releases).

Porting costs money, Linux is a super small platform irrelevant for any AAA publisher. If we don't pay a price premium for an Aspyr or Feral port, there won't be any huge game releases in the future at all. It's as simple as that.

Thank you very much Liam for the great insights. I have the impression Linux gaming in 2017 is about Indie ports from Ethan, Cheese and Ryan Gordon and a handful of AAA titles from Feral. Aspyr has already left the building (regarding AAA) and none of the big publishers cares about SteamOS or Steam Machines.

I just hope some people will finally acknowledge the market reality and pur their money where there (big) mouth is.

Sorry for being so negative, but apart from Vulkan's great improvements I don't see a realistic chance for AAA Linux gaming in the foreseeable future.

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What I would like:

Rise of the Tomb Raider
Life Is Strange: Before The Storm
NieR: Automata
Shadow of War

What we will get:

DiRT 4
Total War: Whatever

I'm pretty sure DiRT 4 is a great game, but I suck at racing games and we urgently need another great story-driven third-person adventure/action-adventure.

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I use SteamOS on my living room gaming PC because it is by far the most couch-friendly and "plug-and-play" distro out there. I've encountered several game-breaking bugs or couldn't get a game running at all on other distributions such as elementary OS (which I like).

Just an example: Even though the DualShock 4 implementation seems to be broken in the current stable build of Brewmaster -- SteamOS is by far the best Linux distro for gamepad use. I've got all my Bluetooth and other gamepads working on SteamOS without installing any additional stuff. That's awesome and besides macOS (which has built-in DualShock 3 and 4 support) not possible on a plain vanilla Windows installation.

Back on topic: Leaving Lyndow worked flawlessly for me when I played it back in February/March on SteamOS.

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