[nippples]

> What is the point of a Linux based console?

Let's break it down

> What is the point of a console?

Very predictable hardware specs & setup.

> What is the point of the console being Linux-based?

Reduction of brand-new OS development costs; potentially zero need for writing drivers depending on hardware setup; very extensive presence of compilers / interpreters / libraries that can be freely usable out of the box.

[Feniks]

Too bad Linux still doesn't play nice with most games. SteamOS was a failure.

[merlijn_s]

Roughly 1/3 of the steam library runs on Linux. Valve continues to update SteamOS, and they are still heavily involved in creating Linux drivers and middleware. Every week new games are ported, new frameworks are released with Linux support and new Linux dev game tools are created.

SteamOS succeeded in forcing Microsoft to clear up its act, and this is the main reason for Valve's investment. Their continued investment is to continue to make sure that they have a plan B. They are doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work to make the Linux gaming stack amazing. This looks "failed" from the outside because they aren't pushing the platform heavily, but it is actually a lot more beneficial that doing a big marketing push before the platform is ready.

The interesting thing with a platform like Linux is that it's not dependent on one big revenue stream to survive. Because of this, it doesn't matter if it takes years to get massive adoption because it's not burning a hole in the pocket of a company. If xbox was in the same position linux was in, you would be correct in saying that it failed, because anything less than 30% market share means gigantic losses for Microsoft which would lead to axing xbox.

PS: Atari's games run fine on Linux. Their retro emulator runs on Linux. They seem to know what they're doing.

[legohead]

Less than 1% of Steam users use linux. [1] It's a failure.

[1] http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=combined

[loup-vaillant]

Bad metric. Also: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3045249/linux/linux-gaming-i...

Valve doesn't really care how many users are running Linux right now —they still have their Windows revenue. What they do care about is how many users would switch to Linux if Valve was for some reason forced to drop Windows support altogether (like, Microsoft goes Apple on their users and mandates an app store). That number may be much higher.

You'd also have to keep in mind what's keeping users to Windows. From where I stand, exclusive titles play a big role. Linux has no exclusive title to speak of. Why would it, that market is way too small for such madness. Windows, understandably has loads. My only reason for still using Windows is a couple titles I can't bring myself to renounce.

Then there are drivers and tooling, but that's just the same kind of network effects, really.

[pjmlp]

The same amount that moved from Windows XP to GNU/Linux, because Windows gaming was doomed with DX 10 being Vista/Windows 7 only.

[cat199]

but what about anything that is > 100% of my attention span?

[pjmlp]

What forced Microsoft to clear up its act, was the feedback at GDC and similar events, nothing to do with SteamOS.

The very fact that Asus and others never really bothered that much to sell Steam Machines, shows how much market relevant it was.

[merlijn_s]

Valve's announcement that games ran faster on SteamOS had an almost immediate response:

> “A few weeks after this post went out, some very senior developers from Microsoft came by for a discrete visit. They loved our post, because it lit a fire underneath Microsoft's executives to get their act together and keep supporting Direct3D development. (Remember, at this point it was years since the last DirectX SDK release. The DirectX team was on life support.) Linux is obviously extremely influential." [1]

And again, market relevance was not required for SteamOS to succeed. Gabe Newell has been very open about the fact that SteamOS' goal was to keep Microsoft in check and have a plan B for when things go south..

[1] http://gadgets.ndtv.com/games/news/steam-s-linux-and-opengl-...

[pjmlp]

The Steam hardware/OS survey is a good indication how successful plan B would be.

[WillPostForFood]

I thought and posted something similar in another Steam/Linux thread. I was corrected by a passionate Linux user, so I'll return the favor. The Steam hardware survey will not appear for Big Picture users, which is what SteamOS will launch into by default, so it gets undercounted.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3045249/linux/linux-gaming-i...

[hood_syntax]

Are you implying people wouldn't jump to SteamOS if it met the needs of gamers? If 95% of Steam games ran on it that would be a huge thing. Lots of people don't want to run Windows 10 because of privacy issues (maybe not a huge number, but it's likely a larger portion of gaming enthusiasts fit into that group than the population at large). And is there a better value proposition than free? If it meets your needs and costs nothing, why would you pay for an equivalent product?

[pjc50]

SteamOS is a "fleet in being", or nuclear deterrent. Its purpose is to make sure that Valve can survive if Windows decided they wanted to "Windows Store" their platform and force every game to pay Microsoft a 30% cut.

Until Microsoft do that, it's not actually very necessary. But it might become necessary at short notice.

[loup-vaillant]

Did you mean "Too bad most games still don't play nice with Linux"?

If you didn't, what makes game development more difficult on Linux¹, compared to the alternatives²?

[1]: More specifically, mainstream GNU/Linux distributions [2]: Windows and MacOS

[ido]

One thins is that Linux users often have suboptimal graphics drivers installed (probably cause the open source drivers tend to be incomplete/buggy and the official drivers from AMD/nvidia aren't installed by default on most linux distros).

Another is that it's just generally a lot more heterogeneous than windows and mac (lots of different distros with variously up to date libraries, drivers, etc).

[khedoros1]

> One thing is that Linux users often have suboptimal graphics drivers installed

The same is true on a new install of Windows, though. First stop when the OS is running: Non-Microsoft browser. Second stop: Graphics card vendor site, to replace whichever outdated driver Windows shipped it for the hardware.

I mean, not as bad, usually (outdated official drivers on Windows, versus often-inferior unofficial/Open drivers on Linux).

[ido]

I usually buy whatever high end option dell sells when buying a new pc and I haven't had to install any drivers on my own in a long time.

[pjmlp]

Lack of GUI tooling at the same level as it is available on Windows, macOS, PS4, XBox and Nintendo.

The game developers culture is based on making money of IP, outsourcing game development tasks, not about sharing the code and making the world a better place.

On commercial platforms, the GPU and OS vendors even fly tech support to AAA studios to work around driver issues.

[Feniks]

Actually the onus is on the OS to entice people to code for it.

Developers developers developers as Ballmer once said.

[mmjaa]

http://repo.openpandora.org/

^^ this is something no other game console has.

[b3lvedere]

The pyra is an awesome device, but also very expensive.

[baldfat]

I got a ton of games I can play on Linux. Personally a HUGE win.

Just there is not a lot of Linux Desktop users though it appears we are around 3% now.

[nippples]

> Too bad Linux still doesn't play nice with most games. SteamOS was a failure.

It depends heavily on the engine being used or if custom engine on how much the devs have relied on stuff designed to wall your product into windows.

There's like a couple of games out of ~100 I got on Steam that I've had big problems with in Ubuntu. A couple others just needed launch options to prevent the game from guessing settings so wrong I can't even fix those in-game and launch a launcher program where I can tweak those before starting the game.