Considering the initial proposition was that "pulling in users from Asia would probably help quite a lot [to improve Linux gaming]", I don't think the proportion of handheld usage in Asia contradicts that. 30% PC users in Asia still represents more people than the entire population (not gamers or even PC users) of North America and Europe combined. To me, that looks like a significant pool of potential users to try and include.

(According to figures from Wikipedia's List of continents by population

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Quoting: PatolaThe best part is that it is a more open universe system. According to [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinder_Roleplaying_Game"]wikipedia[/url], "The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook is a 576-page hardback book released under the Open Game License.". Which is not open-source but at least is friendlier than the usual strict copyright licenses of the gaming industry. (Note that Wizards of the Coast also started using this license again for D&D recently, maybe influenced by Pathfinder).

I could be talking out of my ass, but aren't they obligated to use that license since their system is heavily based on D&D 3(.5)? I'm not familiar enough with Pathfinder, but Fantasy Craft for example, which is also based on D&D 3.5 and OGL material, includes in its license text a lengthy paragraph describing what is open game content and what is "product identity" (i.e. protected IP--mostly visual content and anything related to FC-specific campaign settings, which may ambiguously include all spells and creatures in the manual).

Regardless, I'll have an eye on this when I finally get through my backlog of CRPGs... in a few years?

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyI had always assumed that games was a significant factor holding the Linux desktop back, and if it achieved something like parity with MacOS for game availability and playability (which it basically has), Linux would be freed to grow significantly more both as a desktop OS in general and as a platform people played games on. This does not seem to have actually happened so far.

I feel like the progress that has currently been made in Linux gaming may have helped people who were already on the fence commit to Linux (I would probably be on that boat myself), but for someone who's more committed to gaming than to software freedom in the first place, that progress hasn't been sufficient yet. For someone like me, you might look at the Linux option like "It has all those qualities, and it can run some games" and go for it. For others it may look more like "It can't play all my games, so I don't care what else it can do."

Not to mention that Linux is unfamiliar, not mainstream, not always compatible with what you're used to/forced to use, doesn't ship with the hardware you buy... gaming is only one part of the equation for desktop growth.

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Quoting: fabertaweIt must be an age thing but I can't see the obsession with having to have all the latest so called "AAA games". How much does this cost to buy all these new releases at full price?!

I've got over 400 Linux games :O and have played a fraction of them to completion. If I never buy another game I will still never play all the GOOD games I haven't yet touched.

Quoting: wolfyrion3. No gamer will want to play a game after 1 or 2 years if it will be ported.

I will and do ^_^ I actually prefer this as all the bug fixes and DLC are included and it's cheaper!

Apparently you and I aren't gamers, nevermind the ludicrous amount of hours Guild Wars 2's /age command shows me or how many times I've beaten Borderlands 1 & 2, or the fact that I'm more familiar with the lore of the Forgotten Realms than the history of my country.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyLinux should, however, improve support for Chinese typing if it's bad. Fundamentally I think open source should be just as good for Asians as for everyone else; piracy only solves one problem with Windows. It would be nice to see them turning on to the advantages of Free Software.

Unfortunately, these being community-based projects, you need skilled and knowledgeable people who care about that issue to work on it. The people who already work on Linux OSes but know nothing about Chinese can't do much about it themselves; and if Linux isn't already attractive for Asians, there's little incentive for Asians to work on developing it further. It's a vicious circle that would be hard to break without someone deciding to hire the right people to contribute open code to the projects. But between non-Asians and Asians who (hypothetically) have little reason to care about Linux, who will want to put that kind of money forward?

Quoting: mylkasince google is now "Platinum Member of The Linux Foundation", supports VULKAN and also planing a console do you think it is going to be a linux based console? like the steam machine?

From what little I've seen about that, it looks like Google would approach that from a game streaming angle, so while I imagine the client computer could be Linux-based, the game-running servers would probably use Windows to have the most attractive library possible. So not very different from other such services that have popped up in the past couple years, but with a bigger name and more solid infrastructure behind it.

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Quoting: BeamboomIf they need to heavily rewrite their own inhouse engine to make it work, that's an entirely different ballpark of course. But do that even happen, ever?

I'm not the right person to ask that kind of question, but one example I can think of as far as in-house engines are concerned is Carmageddon: Reincarnation; which, as we know, is unlikely to ever get ported as initially promised.

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Quoting: STiATThe only two companies who managed to make their games non-steam and have their own launcher and are not selling on steam are Activision/Blizzard with Battle.net and EA with Origin.

And a plethora of MMOs.

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Installing and running launchers from every publisher I buy from is pretty much the opposite of what I want, but nonetheless this is welcome news as it shows that they take their Linux playerbase seriously and are willing to invest in that segment of the market. I hope it does well :)

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Quoting: BeamboomI think it is so odd that a port is dependent on the sales on another platform. I see this often so I guess there is a reason for this, but how come?
I mean, I would have thought it was the opposite: If my sales of a release flopped, I would be desperate to port it to other platforms/markets to at least squeeze SOME more money out of it, while if it became a hit I'd be having my hands full handling the support and planning expansions on that one platform.

Isn't that more logical?

In addition to what Eike already pointed out, I think a lot of companies prefer to cut their losses and try something new when a product isn't making enough profit, rather than drain their resources further trying to salvage it. Since there is a cost to porting and they can't just "turn it on" to squeeze more money out of it, it wouldn't make sense to incur more cost than what they expect to make in return (statistically if nothing else); i.e. they might make more sales but actually lose money getting those sales. If they're running out of cash and have employees to pay, they'll wager on something completely new rather than a losing horse.

I think your perspective makes more sense at the opposite end of the development process: if you're going to make a game, you might as well build it with cross-compatibility in mind from the start to have a bigger audience for only a little more effort (compared to finding out post-release how many of your components have to be replaced completely, redoing a lot of the dev work and ending up with multiple versions to maintain and support).

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*Galaxy ;)

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