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.

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Quoting: skinnyrafOk, half a year with a Steam Machine and SteamOS.

Steam Machines and SteamOS promised the best of both worlds: freedom of a PC (even freer than on Windows) and convenience of a console. So as soon as I got one, I added Debian repositories using awesome SteamOS-Tools, installed Minecraft and Kodi. Sure, I had to take a keyboard from my main PC to do some console magic, but after I installed sshd, I didn't even have to do that - remote administration FTW.

And then issues started: broken upgrades, reboot hell, Minecraft launcher didn't work with a Steam Controller virtual keyboard, so I had to attach an old USB keyboard... Kodi wasn't that accessible, as I had to fire up Steam and then to start Kodi - Chromecast is much friendlier... and cheaper. Installing games from GOG proved troublesome because of additional restrictions that Steam client puts on .desktop files...

So I restored the system partition and use it purely as a PC console: vanilla SteamOS, Steam games only. I use Chromecast for multimedia. RTS (e.g. Dawn of War 2) are barely playable, so I play them on Debian using k/m.

Would I buy one today? Probably yes, or I would get myself PS4 to play AAA games hassle free and upgraded my Debian box for PC only games available on Linux, I don't know.

That said, Train Fever or Cities:Skylines are awesome on 100'' and Shadow of Mordor is much better using a Steam Controller than either k/m or an Xbox controller. And Zotac Nen is sweet: way smaller than a console, dead quiet, fast to boot and fast to shut down.

I don't think I'd ever buy an actual Steam Machine. I'd build my own, not even sure I would trade my customized Fedora for SteamOS. I've seen a lot of these complaints and others. One that seems like a really big issue is that some of the game start up/configuration dialogs are unusable or nearly unusable in SteamOS/big picture mode. Valve really needs to get the interface/useability issues resolved for the Steam Machines to succeed. Netflix and Kodi should work out of the box as they provide the same functions that are standard in consoles and just regular smart TV's.

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Quoting: calvinThanks for the appreciation. Some quick comments:

On sobriety: I don't have any horses in Linux gaming, amazing as it sounds on this site - I'm more of a neutral observer. (I do use Linux and I do game, though just likely not at the same time.) However, I'm interested in the "meta" business of gaming, myself.

On exclusives: People state this, but I don't really know. You can enjoy the consoles without ever playing an exclusive. You can also see games that are PC, and as such, on Steam Machines, as exclusive to that "console." Timed exclusivity might be the better option as its a bit customer friendlier, and there exists the impatient.

I think outright exclusives are just wrong. I do find timed exclusives to be acceptable, depending on the amount of time. A year seems pretty extreme. Six months I find reasonable. I also wouldn't have a problem with Valve doing timed exclusives for SteamOS/Linux. For now at least, I think the only way they could pull that off is if it was their game and they haven't been making a lot of games lately.

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Exclusivity I think is the biggest problem for SteamOS. All other platforms support exclusivity, which makes it hard. Consumers may look and think, with this platform I get.... which I can't with others. On this other platform I'll get .... which I can't get with others. With SteamOS I don't get anything I wouldn't get with other platforms. I don't think Valve should support Exclusives as I think they are malicious, that they hurt users and hurt the industry. It is a big hurdle though. Customers should boycott any game in which a platform company (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) paid or pressured a developer/publisher for exclusive rights. If no one bought the games the practice wouldn't happen anymore. Of course developers and publishers should be free to target whatever platforms they want, I just think there should be no pressure or financial incentive given that is intended to restrict players access to content they are willing to pay for.

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I think the article is good, with the exception of the statement that Steam Machines failed. They are definitely stagnant. If they failed they would no longer be for sale and no one would be marketing them further or releasing new modules. Dell recently had a new commercial/advertisement?, and made a statement about new releases towards the end of the year (Deux Ex MD was probably one they were referring to). This isn't something that happens for a failed platform. They definitely haven't been a commercial success, but I think failed is the wrong language. With the limited availability of high popularity content (AAA games), Steam Machines are only now in a state where there is a potential for success. Did anyone really believe they would take off with a bunch of indie titles and 10 or 15 big name games? I'm surprised Valve released at all in the state they did, I think they probably got a lot of feedback from publishers/developers about being unwilling to work on the platform if Valve was never going to release anything. So Valve released it, content is coming along. It was very slow but has been speeding up. Steam Machines may fail, but I don't think we're there yet. When Dell abandons SteamOS for Windows on their Steam Machines and Valve stops updating SteamOS, that's when I'll view Steam Machines (Linux based) as being dead.

Edited to fix my own badly phrased language (replaced several instances of dead with failed)

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Quoting: EdmeneThanks for the response WorthlessBums.
I feel that what doesn't help the sales numbers partially are situations like mine where I don't have a big budget and have a excess of games, so I started to prioritize games from developers that were bought previously, high review scores (or recommendations) and the AAA releases rather than a lot of indies, which translates to fewer games acquired per year.

Same here, I buy mostly bigger games. I do buy a few indie games but I'm pretty picky about them and my taste is a little particular. I'm quite fond of Slain and Mother Russia Bleeds.

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Quoting: WorthlessBumsDeveloper here ;)

First, thanks to everyone who said some kind things! Second, I'd like to clarify a few things.

...

Someone tried to run the revenue numbers from Linux sales of Steam Marines 1, but it was both inaccurate and incomplete. I am under NDA as a Steam developer, but I can cast a bit of light on the whole issue.

I recently blogged that the game's entire development cost was $97,913.88 USD over a 30 month period. [External Link] That comes out to an average of $3,263.90 a month of development cost. About 70% of that cost was spent paying myself to work on my game (i.e. not contracting for art, audio, et cetera). That brings the monthly cost down to about $2,284.73.

It took me about a 3 month span to port the game over to Linux, but part of that was not full time dev, so let's just say it took about 2 months. That's a total cost of $4,569.46 to get the first Linux build up and running. The person who tried to run the revenue numbers came up with a gross figure of €4,440 - so you can already see the problem.

.....

Is 2% good or bad? If it's bad then there's presumably things I could do to get more Linux users. If it's good, what most people here seem to be saying, then that's actually really bad because that's a strong argument against supporting Linux in my games; they'd simply never even break even.

.....

I'm currently working [Steam Marines 2](http://www.steammarines2.com/ [External Link]), and the subject of Mac and Linux has already come up. This time there's no significant cost for porting because I'm making the game in Unity instead of Torque2D. That said I've already been performance testing on Mac and there are issues, and I have Linux-specific bugs a mile long. To support both those platforms is likely to result in yet another loss on the long run although not a foregone conclusion.

Thanks for the additional detail and for supporting Linux! I honestly probably haven't and won't buy any of your games but I still appreciate your work. It's unfortunate to hear so many bugs on steam marines 2 using Unity, does this appear to be more work than it was with 1/no Unity? What version of Unity? Is it actually Unity or plugins/middleware that are the problem? Do you plan on releasing Mac/Linux day 1 with Windows? Comparing 3 years of Windows sales to 1 year of Linux sales doesn't seem very helpful. Would be interesting to see if the numbers are the same with simultaneous releases.

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Quoting: LeopardOh c'mon.You're just so used to begging developers.

If he is loving Linux and Mac community;then why he is complaining about sale percentage?

Why is he saying about game's profits?Why is he whining?

You're just so blind.

Polite conversions generate much better results. Calling people beggars, whiners and physically impaired isn't going to help anything.

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Quoting: liamdawe@Leopard that's a really bad attitude to take. They specifically said they will continue to support us even though it's not financially worth it for them. Your attitude undermines us, especially with smaller developers.

I think sometimes developers saying it isn't worth it is a cop out. Give us some details. How much work did you actually put in to make the Linux version. Like the Rust dev that said it wasn't worth it even though they sold about 30,000 copies, which comes out to around $600,000. Doubt they spent anywhere that to make and support the Linux version. If you're on Unity and didn't use incompatible middle ware, you shouldn't have to sell much to make it profitable.

So while I definitely appreciate that he made and supports the version, and that he said he will continue to support Linux, I find his logic suspect. It doesn't support us well to publicly say it isn't worth it, especially if isn't true. Would be nice to have an idea how much it cost to create/support the Linux version and what was actually brought in by Linux sales.

Like others have said, it isn't accurate to compare numbers when one version comes out two years after the other. The hype is gone, the Windows version has been for sale much...much longer, many people have already bought it for Windows that may have bought it for Linux.

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Quoting: jensUnfortunately the games crashes on my machine direct after game start as well. This tip sounded very promising but didn't helped. My hardware is heavily outdated for this title, that could be the reason, but before investing I would like to know if my software stack is fine. Does someone got this game running on Fedora 24 with Steam and NVidia drivers (370.28) from http://negativo17.org/ [External Link]? Other games like Tomb Raider or Life is Strange do run fine on my machine, though I don't own Mad Max or Rocket League.

PS: Before I forgot, thanks a lot to Feral and all people/players that invest money into Linux gaming! Really cool what's happening right now!

PPS: Amazing job by Feral, I own quite some games and all titles are working perfectly, this is really the first one that gives me slight troubles.

I am running Fedora 64 bit with Nvidia drivers from Negativo and haven't seen issues other than getting past the initial start up crash, which for me was resolved by issuing killall pulseaudio.

Besides the killall pulseaudio, you may want to make sure you aren't running other applications that are using the sound card when you try to start it. For several games on the first run I had terminate all other applications (Chromium seems to be a troublemaker), then after killing all other apps execute "killall pulseaudio" and then launch the game.

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