Will it be possible to bootcamp SteamOS onto my Mac Mini? It's essentially the same as installing Linux right?
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OS X Bootcamp SteamOS?
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And of these games, how many are not already available in Mac versions?
Initially it is hard to see what the benefits will be but I guess we'll see over the course of time.
The name? It won't have "all the games" available. Linux ports will be slow to take off.
Not necessarily. I'm in Linux right now, and I've seen the amount of games available through Steam grow by leaps and bounds over the last couple of months. To give you an example, when I first tried it out back in April, I had 15 of my games available for me to play. Now I have 50. On top of that, just about every Kickstarter game out at the moment has a Mac/Linux port planned at release.
Valve knows where they're weakest, and what they need to do if they want to compete with the PS4/Xbone., and they've been talking to developers and throwing around a lot of money to do just that. I believe support is going to grow for the platform faster than you think, from the indies all the way to the AAA publishers.
There are also still many games that are ported to Mac that don't reach Linux because the first party studio don't do ports. Even some porting studios that handle PC versions don't do it themselves such as nixxes at Eidos who have done Deus EX HR, Tomb Raider and Hitman Absolution. Or the studio at Capcom that does the same thing for their PC versions. They instead farm it out to yet another studio such as Aspyr or Feral (Capcom has yet to bring a game to the Mac, speaking of). So unless they suddenly get into Linux porting new studios will have to be formed or else they will continue to not get those games. At this point there are no official announcements the only thing we can do is speculate.
I asked Feral about it when Steam was brought to Linux and they said they want to focus on one platform. But who knows what the future may hold. I'd just hope that if they do branch out it doesn't spread them too think that it wouldn't lower their output of new games which is already very low as it is. They don't seem to have enough resources to do a lot of games in a year much less for two platforms... and Aspyr does even fewer games than Feral does.
What I do know is porting houses that do AAA games are few and far between on Linux and much of the few games that have reached it lately where done first party. Such as Serious Sam 3 and the upcoming Metro Last Light or the perpetually stuck in limbo Painkiller HD. Loki software went out of business and Linux Game Publishing hasn't done much new lately that I can tell.
Anyway, it seems to me that Valve is hedging their bets on streaming for "backwards compatibility" (Similar to how Sony is for the PS4... only not in the cloud)... and we'll just have to see how many studios will jump on the native SteamOS game train.
There haven't been any announcements yet and many studios seem to keep it secret until release day... the only way we can tell is sometimes the Steam DB leaks a game.
I asked Feral about it when Steam was brought to Linux and they said they want to focus on one platform. But who knows what the future may hold. I'd just hope that if they do branch out it doesn't spread them too think that it wouldn't lower their output of new games which is already very low as it is. They don't seem to have enough resources to do a lot of games in a year much less for two platforms... and Aspyr does even fewer games than Feral does.
What I do know is porting houses that do AAA games are few and far between on Linux and much of the few games that have reached it lately where done first party. Such as Serious Sam 3 and the upcoming Metro Last Light or the perpetually stuck in limbo Painkiller HD. Loki software went out of business and Linux Game Publishing hasn't done much new lately that I can tell.
Anyway, it seems to me that Valve is hedging their bets on streaming for "backwards compatibility" (Similar to how Sony is for the PS4... only not in the cloud)... and we'll just have to see how many studios will jump on the native SteamOS game train.
There haven't been any announcements yet and many studios seem to keep it secret until release day... the only way we can tell is sometimes the Steam DB leaks a game.
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SteamOS will need the game to be (re)developed for Linux/SteamOS, all the games on Windows and Mac only will not work on a SteamBox without also owning a PC or Mac.
Edwin
They'll need to be redeveloped. However one of the features of SteamOS is game streaming from another computer, meaning you could have your gaming rig churning away upstairs whilst you game on your Steam Box in the living room.
This has been a long time coming with a lot of little announcements along the way. A while back valve made a big deal about how they managed to tweak linux with the help of nvidia/amd/intel to provide better framerates than windows 7 (let alone osx) on their own source engine.
Then valve released a steam linux client, and heaps of indie developers quickly got on board. After the steamos announcement, we found that out valve has had nvidia engineers stationed at valve for quite some time tweaking performance to its maximum.
A week ago DICE were saying that all it takes is one killer game (like halo was for xbox) for linux to kick off in the gaming scene.
Then two days ago, more DICE rumours surfaced suggesting the possibility of Battlefield 4 on linux - after Lars revealed the FrostByte 3 engine has been ported to linux
The target here obviously isnt wine ports and half arsed releases - which has helped gaming on mac, but also kept it second tier (along with poor opengl performance). What valve wants is AAA developers to release proper native games, with engines tweaked for highest performance.
I'm hoping it happens, but am also a bit sceptical on how many will devote resources into it. Its a vicious circle, and Lars is right, all it takes is a few killer games to kick it off.
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Nothing was said about Battlefield on steambox. People didn't bother to read the full article, and instead cherry picked fragments of quotes.
DICE did say that all it takes is one killer game. But it's not going to be from them.
This quote from the first article sums it up.
'The director believes that with its recent rise and success, indie game development is in a better position to cater for the Linux video game market despite its limited audience.
"With indie, for a long time, it seemed that it was only AAA title that will survive and then the explosion came with mobile and indie games," he said. "So I'm really happy to see that has swung back to where people say 'Well, will AAA titles survive? Are they mammoths that don't know that they are dead yet?'
"So, to me, I think that the possibilities are many and I think indies can build for Linux even though we don't have enormous audience," he said.'
You need to remember who actually publishes Battlefield.
And that game, yes, is Half-Life 3. If anything can get tons of people to hop over from Windows to Linux/Steamboxes, it'd be that.
Course it'll help if they have tons of games on there besides that. Linux has the indie scene covered nearly 100%, but like I've been saying ad nauseam, they need those AAA games to cover all their bases.
Speaking of which...
Edddeduck, if SteamOS does end up taking off in earnest, do you think Feral and Aspyr will end up supporting it, or will you continue being Mac only? From what little I understand, it seems like porting from OSX to Linux is a far simpler affair than going from Windows to OSX. It could be a good way to pad your income if it doesn't take a ton of effort on your part.
If Half-Life 3 comes out, it will be available on PC, Mac, and Steambox/Linux. Valve aren't going to start releasing OS exclusives all of a sudden.
You're right, they won't release it exclusively. That'd be suicide on their part.
But they will do something to make the SteamOS version more appealing. They're launching a new platform, and know they've got an ace up their sleeve. They'll find a way to play it to their advantage, I'm sure.
I dunno, I wouldn't put it past them. People flipped the hell out when Half-Life 2 came out and required Steam. It might seem weird now, but people really hated Steam for the first few years of its life. Then it got good.
Could be the same thing happening here...
I dunno, I wouldn't put it past them. People flipped the hell out when Half-Life 2 came out and required Steam. It might seem weird now, but people really hated Steam for the first few years of its life. Then it got good.
Could be the same thing happening here...
They've spent years expanding their service to multiple platforms, and pushing steamplay support.... It's simply not going to happen.