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[Readingaid]

Microsoft does not give a rats arse about a game developer releasing its own OS because even if SteamOS suddenly gazumped Windows do you think businesses would suddenly switch over to a gaming platform? or the military, or manufacturers?

Not only that, but most people do not solely use their PC for gaming what about photoshop, dreamweaver, music and video editing and production.

Microsoft is loosing no sleep over any of this.

 

[waggabond]

Games are just a hobby for Microsoft. Nothing to fear.

 

[atpbx]

A choice between a Microsoft future or a Valve one, I would stick with Microsoft every day of the week.

 

[alexandros]

A choice between a Microsoft future or a Valve one, I would stick with Microsoft every day of the week.

Steve Ballmer, is that you?

It's not about a Valve or Microsoft future. It's about PC gaming's future on open platforms.

 

[slapnuts]

A good piece by Polygon, some very interesting points.





Much more at the link, be sure to read the whole thing.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/1/14/5307584/steam-dev-days-valve-owned-future-plan

badass!

 

[Morzak]

Steve Ballmer, is that you?

It's not about a Valve or Microsoft future. It's about PC gaming's future on open platforms.

If it was all about open then the BPM GUI wouldn't be proprietary, anything within the BPM UI will be sold over Valve, they just want to increase the reach of their store.....

I'm not opposed to shifting to linux but the way Valve goes about it isn't exactly what I would envision as a really open platform. And SteamOS will not bring us the Year of the linux desktop because the UI isn't exactly great to use on a desktop it's made for Living room / TV use.

 

[Synth]

why do people continue to tout androids success as if it has anything to do with linux? the only people who know it's linux are people who use linux desktop. most smartphone users don't even know what linux is.

hmmm.... I wonder...

It doesn't really matter how many people know that's they're using it. What matter is they are. Believe me, I'm no fan of Linux (I actually love Windows 8, have WP8 and a Surface), but the point is, Linux has proven to be something to worry MS. Linux enabled Android, and Android's success is currently enabling Chromebooks. All the while it's blocking avenues MS needs to occupy as people move away from desktops.

 

[Dr. Kaos]

I wonder if Titan Fall will ever come to SteamBox. I know you can just dual-boot but it would be pretty sweet. That would almost seal the deal for me.

Yeah you make some great points, but Windows 8 sucks. And if I have to give up some extra effects I would gladly do it. Besides Linux was never taken seriously as a gaming platform until now. Things will definitely change as time goes by.

TitanFall will not come to linux/Steambox but the sequel might in 3+ years

Spoiler

if SteamOS takes off

. 2+ years to make a sequel and additional time to port it is my wild guess.

I wouldn't underestimate Microsoft's ability to fix Windows in new releases. After all, it wouldn't be the first shitty windows version they've plagued the world with

Is this why Indie developers are the big driver for Linux gaming? Most new indie games are released on multiple platforms, including Linux.

I agree Microsoft have a nice toolchain, but it suffers from the Internet Explore syndrome. Once DirectX gained a market advantage, right around 9.0c, MS lost focus and instead of working to improve it started using DirectX in their political game.

As for Visual Studio, I have no reason to doubt you when you say it's great, I haven't really used it extensively myself, but there is nothing preventing you from writing OpenGL code in VS, so it doesn't really matter.

Most indie games are not very demanding of the hardware and use 3rd party frameworks and take the performance hit without problems. I agree with you otherwise, though I think you might be minimizing the advantage of a tightly integrated VS + DX when you say it doesn't really matter. It might matter, depending on the circumstances of the devs.

thats an industry standard. it doesn't mean it's the best one.



on windows and ms consoles only, maybe. again it's doesn't mean it's the best. PCGamer had a press conference with PC developers (Chris Roberts, ...) some months ago - and they all agreed DirectX being kind of bad. It get's the best driver support from Nvidia and AMD. And since no capable PC graphic chips manifacture besides them left in the gaming relevant space...



visual studio? yeah, it's actually pretty normal. there are many 3rd-party plugins that makes it pretty good. i don't use it myself through

what else?



most indies are using some 3rd-party tools/engines like unity, it seems. and the one developing "from scratch" are using stuff like mono/monogame (i personally dislike it) or trying opengl directly. mostly of the fact to get it run on ios/android (opengl es)


besides: opengl + openal combination can compete with directx pretty easily. there are many pretty good multiplatfrom libraries. SDL for example.



Carmack wasn't in charge on linux/osx versions. He wrote his code in a pretty portable way. Timothee Besset was the one at id software doing the porting. He left before Rage launched. Bethesda is a windows-only company, so they didn't care for OSX/Linux support.
Carmacks preferred OpenGL since Quake 1. At that time it was the best API available, Direct X did just suck at the time. However Microsoft learned, DX got better and MS actively sabotaged the OpenGL-development. I'm not saying MS is actually responsible for the stagnation of the API - where there many other mistakes made.
Right now it's pretty good actually. Carmacks mentioned DirectX being better some years ago - well - right now there are pretty on par. OpenGL >4 finally managed to sort all that old deprecated stuff out of the api, like microsoft did years ago...



i really don't care who wins. it would be nice for me to have more games on linux available. same goes for osx. i'm not using windows on my machines at home, as i find the os horrible.




it would be horrible. "unknown" blobs don't belong in a "web standard".
it would be just like microsofts "open" docx/xmlx document "standards". study their techpapers and try to fully implement it. besides of the format being quite complicated (=horrible), there are too many section like "there is a binary information going here", but it isn't explained that it is exactly

We don't really disagree on much at all

Spoiler

You admit that VS is pretty good and you don't claim that there is a better alternative.

. You made some good points.

 

[Fafalada]

That, to me, is the primary job of the IDE. I've never used MS' own version control systems or whatever else might be included, so I wouldn't know about those.

I consider managing your makefiles (or solutions/projects if you use VS terminology) to be integral part of an IDE - and it's one of the most broken examples (unless 2013 miraculously fixed all the issues). To be fair this isn't just an IDE problem, their project file formats were just not designed to scale, period.
Integration with source control has traditionally been dodgy as well (regardless of source control you choose).
And then there's the part where game-industry spent decades writing plugins, scripts and other workarounds - custom-platform targets/working with non-built in tools (compiler etc.) though given the first issue I mentioned, having many build targets is clearly not an intended usage pattern for MSVC developers.

 

[b0b]

We don't really disagree on much at all

Spoiler

You admit that VS is pretty good and you don't claim that there is a better alternative.

. You made some good points.

VS is *just* an IDE with Microsoft compilers. It get it's job done. It's widely used in the industry because the teams (devs) put enormous amount of time to write their 3rd-party plugins for it to create and modify their workflow. I just think of it like for MS Office - it mostly widely used because people are (more or less) familiar with it, or simply (chose) to rely on it by using their VBA-extensions/scripts for their workflows. Or by using its document formats (which can't be imported/exported without having difficulties). But it doesn't generally make these Microsoft products better than everything else. But, yeah I wouldn't go so far and simply state they are bad and unusable...

If you don't use windows for development (-> and don't use VS) - there are alternatives. On osx I'm using Xcode, on linux a simple IDE or Vim combined with makefiles. Source versioning is handled by git. It doesn't really matter as long it get's the job done.



But when it comes to libraries I'm opinionated. I prefer the OpenGL/OpenAL combo to DirectX. Same goes for SDL. and not only because of the multiplatform compatibility. I find both of them cleaner and simpler than DX. Microsofts choice to bind newer DX versions to newer Windows versions is plain stupid.

 

[HariKari]

why do people continue to tout androids success as if it has anything to do with linux? the only people who know it's linux are people who use linux desktop. most smartphone users don't even know what linux is.

The principles that made Android a success are the same ones that guide Linux. It's a numbers game. If Valve goes in guns blazing by releasing big games as SteamOS exclusives, the install base is going to skyrocket. More attention will be paid, and momentum will be built. That's the idea.

It worked for Steam. SteamOS is a bigger commitment, but everyone involved has the incentive and weight to make it work.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Microsoft needs to be forcibly removed from PC gaming. It will benefit the entire industry.

Thanks for doing what needs to be done, Valve.

Bullocks, like DirectX and driver support for a shit-ton of brands and devices etc was a bad thing throughout the life of windows/PCs. Mark my words and wait until another player gets as large as Microsoft and attempts to deal with the scale and diversity of support that windows does, you'll see that player having very similar issues to MS at that level.

Linux or MAC doesn't even get close. I'm all for competition, run multi boot systems and I like Valve entering the market(s) where MS is but your view is so limited it's a joke.

 

[JaggedSac]

Put me in the Visual Studios is pretty great camp. Our company is moving from mainly DB2 to mainly SQL Server and I have to say that it integrates extremely nicely with it and TFS. Our department is mainly a Java house so Eclipse is my bread and butter, but have started doing a little bit of SQL Server work and I have to say the UI in VS is much, much better than Eclipse. Plug-ins are nice in Eclipse, haven't had to mess with them in VS since we are using a pretty much all MS stack. VS has such great integration tools with easy to configure build targets, unit testing, report building(SSRS, which is another pretty great thing), intellisense, very fast searching/filtering of files, file diffs, etc. Pretty much everything an enterprise level project would need to get work done effectively right out of the gate, in one application.

 

[Jira]

Android tho?

It's funny that for every Android handset sold, MS makes more money than per each Windows Phone due to patent royalties. So if anything they should just advertise Android for Google.

 

[Grampa Simpson]

You'll still get better backward combability then the Xbox one.

I think valve is working at a dll convertor type thingy that will allow none converted games to run. Also you can still dual boot an OS (as any gamer knows).

Eventually, more than a few companies will "port" their older titles to Linux using something like Crossover or PlayOnLinux or just plain WINE with a per game installation and per game settings so that it's mostly transparent. This will go doubly so for games where the porting effort itself isn't worth it, but a skilled WINE guy can work up a config in a day or two, and package it up for Steam.

That said, I suspect that Valve/Steam will offer up help to developers looking to make that sort of transition, and even as it is, many games that are both Windows/Mac are often releasing as Windows/Mac/Linux anymore. If this picks up well enough, in a couple of years, we'll likely see even AAA publishers breaking down and putting out Linux ports. Maybe EA will be the holdout on that.

******

As for me, I plan to pick up a low end Steam Machine to hook up to my TV by Christmas, and even if I mostly use it to run XBMC and Plex, I'm sure I'll also use it to stream games from my Windows box (I use a mac for everything else) and play Linux native games.

I look forward to a future where MS is no longer the dominant player for PC games.

 

[Grampa Simpson]

Microsoft does not give a rats arse about a game developer releasing its own OS because even if SteamOS suddenly gazumped Windows do you think businesses would suddenly switch over to a gaming platform? or the military, or manufacturers?

Not only that, but most people do not solely use their PC for gaming what about photoshop, dreamweaver, music and video editing and production.

Microsoft is loosing no sleep over any of this.

It's really interesting what businesses are doing now. The big ones aren't really giving users their own desktops anymore really. They give them a thin client that connects to a virtualized windows machine in a private cloud. It's all Xen and Citrix. I'm fairly sure that those thin clients will soon transition over from underpowered windows boxes to small android thin clients ($149 + monitor + keyboard + mouse), and I'm not sure how long MS can will manage to keep a stranglehold on the Office Suite of applications, but there are plenty of alternatives which don't work less well out of that ecosystem.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Steve Ballmer, is that you?

It's not about a Valve or Microsoft future. It's about PC gaming's future on open platforms.

I think it's fantastic that just a few months ago you were blasting MS for making a walled system.

Don't try to hide your fanboyism here, Alex.

Valve becoming the new MS is not magically going to change the game.

 

[TAJ]

Linux isn't even coming close to parity on new releases, so Steam OS is actually losing ground in the game space right at this moment. And back catalog... lol.

 

[nephilimdj]

Ms still have dominance over distrubutors and half the worlds schools, its like saying peter cola can beat coke due to reddit marketting.

 

[HariKari]

I think it's fantastic that just a few months ago you were blasting MS for making a walled system.

Don't try to hide your fanboyism here, Alex.

Valve becoming the new MS is not magically going to change the game.

Linux isn't a closed system. The entire idea behind making Linux more popular is so that developers will have a safe haven where no one really dictates what goes on.

This quote from dev days sums it up nicely:

"The Linux ecosystem isn’t flooded with cheap product, like Windows. You don’t have to compete to be heard over the mob.

No one dictates what you can publish, when you can update, what you can charge. No one takes a cut from you. There’s an app store on some Linux systems, but unlike other systems, you aren’t forced to use them to deliver software, so you aren’t beholden to them in any case.

Ms still have dominance over distrubutors and half the worlds schools, its like saying peter cola can beat coke due to reddit marketting.

Irrelevant. Valve is shooting for only a fraction of current Steam users to use this service in the next few years. SteamOS isn't competing with Windows. It's competing with the gaming side of Windows, which is a much more manageable thing. And it doesn't have to trounce Windows, only sustain itself. It's an escape hatch for now, but potentially the future of gaming.

 

[Drona]

Now that net neutrality is dead and done forever, me wants my Valve network NAO!!!!

 

[NoPiece]

Microsoft does not give a rats arse about a game developer releasing its own OS because even if SteamOS suddenly gazumped Windows do you think businesses would suddenly switch over to a gaming platform? or the military, or manufacturers?

Not only that, but most people do not solely use their PC for gaming what about photoshop, dreamweaver, music and video editing and production.

Microsoft is loosing no sleep over any of this.

Most businesses are using windows for completely brain dead shit like data entry, word processing, or point of sales systems that could be easily and cheaply replaced by Linux, ChromeOS, or $99 android tablets. If Microsoft isn't worried, they should be. Gaming is one of the last real reasons anyone needs to use Windows.

Look at it this way, right now there are customer service centers out there with 1000's of Dell's running XP. When it comes time to upgrade, someone smart in their IT department will point out they can upgrade all those computers without the cost of the OS, save hundreds of thousands on licensing, and just use web based CRM.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Microsoft does not give a rats arse about a game developer releasing its own OS because even if SteamOS suddenly gazumped Windows do you think businesses would suddenly switch over to a gaming platform? or the military, or manufacturers?

Not only that, but most people do not solely use their PC for gaming what about photoshop, dreamweaver, music and video editing and production.

Microsoft is loosing no sleep over any of this.

Even within just the gaming industry you have to look past just the consumer side, what of the development side? Sure GIMP gets used but what about animation, modelling, texturing, digital painting (matte), mocap, networking/backend game servers , lighting, supporting game engine plugins etc. I wonder how far the PS4 platform can take this as well? Will this help SteamOS in the future?

Sure Valve aren't targeting anything but the consumer side for now but SteamOS is a far cry from a real OS now isn't it? To me it's more like a hybrid catch up for what consoles have achieved away from the PC gaming industry over the last decades.

Spoiler

Don't shoot me I love PC gaming

 

[alexandros]

I think it's fantastic that just a few months ago you were blasting MS for making a walled system.

Don't try to hide your fanboyism here, Alex.

Valve becoming the new MS is not magically going to change the game.

I don't see how the two are mutually exclusive. Microsoft introduced a walled garden to Windows (WinRT) and if they phase out or even kill the desktop outright they will have locked out all competition from their OS. On Linux it is impossible for Valve to lock out competitors even if they wanted to. I've said it before and I'll say it again, a move towards Linux guarantees an open future for PC gaming and protects it from enforced monopolies, Valve's included.

 

[NoPiece]

I don't see how the two are mutually exclusive. Microsoft introduced a walled garden to Windows (WinRT) and if they phase out or even kill the desktop outright they will have locked out all competition from their OS. On Linux it is impossible for Valve to lock out competitors even if they wanted to. I've said it before and I'll say it again, a move towards Linux guarantees an open future for PC gaming and protects it from enforced monopolies, Valve's included.

Also, while they haven't done it yet, Valve has said they want to move away from curation and greenlight. They have said they want anyone to be able to build a storefront using Steam. It is fair to be skeptical until they actually do it, but the indications are that it won't be a walled garden, and they are moving in the opposite direction as Microsoft.

 

[supersaw]

Obviously Microsoft is not concerned; Valve is tiny in comparison, and as such their recent moves are mostly about self preservation (I think they happen to coincide with what would be best for PC gaming).

With the way walled appstores have been gaining popularity Valve is obviously concerned about their future if Microsoft decided to compete and tightly integrate a digital storefront for AAA games into their OS.

Valve is investing in its future on the PC platform, 10 years ago steam didn't even have a store front and look where it is today.

 

[alexandros]

Even disregarding Microsoft's and Valve's diametrically opposed philosophy on key issues, It's a simple fact that noone can seize control of Linux the way Microsoft conceivably could do with Windows. Even if one wants to argue that they would never do that because it would be detrimental to their bottom line, the possibility is still there and Microsoft's decisions in the past decade or so have given PC gamers reason to believe that they don't have the platform's best interests at heart.

Valve, on the other hand, depend on PC gaming for the largest part of their revenue stream. It is in their best interests to keep PC gaming healthy and it is in their best interests to move to open platforms. It just so happens that both of these goals align completely with PC gamers' interests. One does not have to be a Valve fanboy or part of the Cult of Gaben to understand that.

 

[Durante]

I consider managing your makefiles (or solutions/projects if you use VS terminology) to be integral part of an IDE - and it's one of the most broken examples (unless 2013 miraculously fixed all the issues). To be fair this isn't just an IDE problem, their project file formats were just not designed to scale, period.
Integration with source control has traditionally been dodgy as well (regardless of source control you choose).

I guess that's true. The thing I really admire in modern VS above all other C++ tools is the code editing/comprehension/navigation power, even in large and complex code bases (particularly in combination with Visual Assist X). At work we use Cmake for makefile management (and to generate VC++ solutions) and git for source control (I use it standalone, don't really miss IDE integration with that). I'm sure there are other tools which manage these aspects better, but for me the core experience of working with the code is most important in an IDE.

If you don't use windows for development (-> and don't use VS) - there are alternatives.

I use Visual Studio to develop stuff that can't even compile on Windows. It's just so much better for those core development tasks.

Put me in the Visual Studios is pretty great camp. Our company is moving from mainly DB2 to mainly SQL Server and I have to say that it integrates extremely nicely with it and TFS. Our department is mainly a Java house so Eclipse is my bread and butter, but have started doing a little bit of SQL Server work and I have to say the UI in VS is much, much better than Eclipse.

Now consider that Java is actually the one language where I think open source / free software IDEs are actually by far the most competitive. The situation is much more dire in C++.

 

[Brerlappin]

I dont want Windows removed from the gaming space. Why? Because im a PC gamer who has used Linux in several distros and i know that its just a hell of alot more unweildy to use that Windows. What about all those mods ive installed and loved? Will they have linux versions? Fan patches for older games? You can kiss all that shit goodbye if you move over to steamOS. Will all my GOG library run on steamOS? Seriously the people screaming for MS to suddenly be booted out of the gaming sphere need their heads checked. Ill keep running steam on my Win 7 machine until such a time as linux isnt a pig of an OS to work with

 

[NoPiece]

I dont want Windows removed from the gaming space. Why? Because im a PC gamer who has used Linux in several distros and i know that its just a hell of alot more unweildy to use that Windows. What about all those mods ive installed and loved? Will they have linux versions? Fan patches for older games? You can kiss all that shit goodbye if you move over to steamOS. Will all my GOG library run on steamOS? Seriously the people screaming for MS to suddenly be booted out of the gaming sphere need their heads checked. Ill keep running steam on my Win 7 machine until such a time as linux isnt a pig of an OS to work with

I think you've provided fair assessment of why Linux gaming hasn't worked so far. But Linux provides a solid underpinning, and the hope with SteamOS, that it provides a better user experience, with better performance, and is free.

 

[supersaw]

I dont want Windows removed from the gaming space. Why? Because im a PC gamer who has used Linux in several distros and i know that its just a hell of alot more unweildy to use that Windows. What about all those mods ive installed and loved? Will they have linux versions? Fan patches for older games? You can kiss all that shit goodbye if you move over to steamOS. Will all my GOG library run on steamOS? Seriously the people screaming for MS to suddenly be booted out of the gaming sphere need their heads checked. Ill keep running steam on my Win 7 machine until such a time as linux isnt a pig of an OS to work with

We are talking long term moves here, as in decades. In 10 years time you will be able to run all that shit inside a windows virtual machine under linux.

 

[John_B]

I'm pretty confident that Valve will succeed. Gaming devices powered by a gaming operating system will in the end beat out PCs configured for gaming through a superior user experience.

It's like a repeat of Android, except with gaming devices instead of mobile devices. They will be able to push out updates every year, make big stuff native to the system like cross chat, video capture, video broadcasting.

What we have right now is the Tablet PC, what we will end up with is the iPad.

 

[alexandros]

I was disappointed after CES but Steam Dev Days showed that Valve are still very much committed to pushing Linux.