Are Commercial Games Finally Going To Make It To Linux?

colinneagle writes "Those of us who actively promote Linux as a viable desktop alternative to Windows are often greeted with the following refrain: 'Nobody will use Linux because there are no good games.' The prevailing wisdom is that the abundance of high-quality, commercial video gaming is a key factor in the market-share dominance that Microsoft Windows enjoys. And, in all reality, this is somewhat true. So, then, the obvious course of action is to convince the video game publishers and developers of the world that Linux is a viable (if, perhaps, a bit niche) market. And by 'viable' I mean one thing and one thing only – 'profitable.'Luckily, there have been three high-profile recent examples of Linux users going absolutely nuts over video games, forking over their hard-earned cash in the process: the Humble Indie Bundle (drawing in huge numbers of sales — for a DRM-free product, no less — with sales numbers by Linux users consistently beating out sales to MacOS X users); Canonical's Ubuntu Software Center (where video games make up the top 10 paid software packages); Valve's announcement that it is bringing the Steam store, and community portal, to Linux desktop (specifically Ubuntu). Will the indie game developers (along with Valve) reap the bulk of the rewards that releasing games on Linux is offering...or will some of the big publishers realize what they're missing out on and join in the fun?"

Re:Well that's wonderful

[pnot]

I'll make sure to let our Linux support lead know. He's been bashing his head against a wall trying to get SimpleScalar to compile on our systems for a class to use.

Right. Let's just recall what you were asserting here: that the "everyman" won't use Linux because he finds the command line "scary". Now your "everyman" (who, it suddenly turns out, is also your Linux support lead) wishes to install SimpleScalar, a "system software infrastructure used to build modeling applications for program performance analysis, detailed microarchitectural modeling, and hardware-software co-verification". Despite his evident technical acumen, Everyman is terrified by the notion that he must run a compiler to perform detailed microarchitectural modelling.

"Sod this" says Everyman. "I'm going back to Windows!".

Then he discovers that, on Windows, you also have to build SimpleScalar from source. Poor old Everyman! He should never have applied for that job as Linux Support Lead.