On 15/02/13 08:07, Sean Gibbins wrote:
> Coming in on the periphery of the Linux vs. Microsoft desktop debate is
> the news that Steam is now available for Linux:
>
> http://store.steampowered.com/sale/linux_release/
>
Yeah, it's been in closed then open beta since October. I've been
playing with it a bit.
> Has anybody out there installed and played anything yet?
>
I bought 9 games yesterday for ~22 quid! The sale is the best time to
pick up a few bargains even if you're not going to play it right away.
> And finally, am I right in thinking there's a bit of a kerfuffle kicking
> off with some of the big game developers and Microsoft recently that has
> led some of them [the developers] to threaten to go all Linux on
> Microsoft's posterior? Maybe this is the thin end of that wedge...
>
Not really. Gabe from Valve rather publicly took some pot-shots at
Microsoft about Windows 8 and their new app store which clearly competes
with Steam. Valve have been encouraging developers to port their games
over to Linux. It helps that the 3D development tool "Unity 3D" (not to
be confused with Ubuntu Unity) have added an option to Unity 4 which
makes it easy to create Linux games. They can even load their Windows
games and spit out a Linux binary very easily.
The Steam beta started off with ~25 games and we're now at ~100. That's
not bad growth in just a few months. Compare that to the Mac on Steam
which has ~550 games and Windows which has ~6300. Steam on the Mac
launched in May 2010.
It's clear though that Steam on the Linux desktop is a stepping-stone to
a "SteamBox" console that Valve are preparing, and will run Linux out of
the box.
Cheers,
--
Alan Pope
Engineering Manager
Canonical - Product Strategy
+44 (0) 7973 620 164
alan.pope@???
http://ubuntu.com/
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