i think you are over looking these people have their own PC Digital Store. There is no way the PC version is going to be sub par.
They are also susceptible to have to deal with interfaces and controls (and sometimes even gameplay balancing) that are unoptimized for mouse and keyboard.
Heh, tell it to Linux users
Treated equally is a rare thing. Developers treat bigger markets most.
the vast majority of those still on windows 7 are neither gamers nor have the hardware to run this regardless of the OS.
a lot of 7 users are business users.
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I mean, you know why. there's no financial incentive to develop for Linux. its such a small userbase that it would be a guaranteed financial loss.Heh, tell it to Linux users
That's incorrect (about loss). Linux gaming market is big enough already to be profitable, due to both gradually inceasing size, and costs of making Linux releases going down for multiple reasons. But the usual logic of legacy publishers goes like this:
"We can spend X and make Y amount of money on making a Linux version. But Linux is a small market, we can instead spend same X on doing more for much bigger Windows market, and make Z amount of money (> Y). So why bother about Linux users? They can get lost, we'll only cater to Windows ones".
I.e. it's not about profitability these days, it's about "making more money". That kind of attitude is very hard to overcome, unless the market becomes simply huge and not just big enough to be profitable. One thing CDPR claimed though, that they aren't like legacy publishers, and approach game making more like true artists, so in this sense reaching more people should be in their interest. However I think it's more PR talk than reality. CDPR are pressured by shareholders, and the usual logic of "let's make more money" drives it in the end.
They kind of have a responsibility to their shareholders to spend their time and money wisely....
most of this is theoretical. the gaming market is growing but is the audience growing for your specific game? these companies do market research, you know.
the cost of making a Linux release may be going down, in general, but that wont necessarily hold true on all cases. id wager porting something like Cyberpunk 2077 is a lot more work than porting, say, a shorter shooter using the Unreal Engine.
which is frankly a smart business decision and a totally valid perspective.
if you're going to make more money doing something else, investing in that thing is a loss for you.
this is the same thing. profitability isn't just about getting in the black, its about maximizing your return.
there's still nothing that reliably claims the Linux market is big enough to support the costs of porting a AAA title this large. if this costs them say, 2 million dollars to port it, they'd need to bring in roughly 35000 copies just to match with revenue. that's a lot for the Linux userbase to provide. they're not that big, not yet.
they're not going to potentially lose money to reach 1% more of their user base. calling them liars for not specifically catering to YOUR wants isn't fair.
Exactly the argument that investors use to prioritize short term gains at the cost of long term progress and many other similar things. To translate it into simple terms - the greedier the investor is, the worse policy (for everyone else) the company will have to accommodate that greed. That's why private companies can do a lot of good things that public ones have hard time doing.
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All of this is somewhat theoretical, but demonstrated by actual examples of companies making Linux games and making profit. I.e. the market is here, but like any market it has its dynamics. For example, if too many developers start making Linux games (i.e. faster than influx of new Linux users), market becomes overcrowded, and it becomes harder to make profit on Linux releases. That's been happening lately to a degree. I.e. developers observed lower profits, despite the size of market growing. Paradox sales rep talked about it (Paradox are quite friendly to Linux releases and try to make them whenever possible).
its not "worse policy (for everyone else)" though. its worse policy for a userbase they already never had. its better for the company and potentially, their existing userbase.
this is like arguing why console exclusives wouldn't port to PC. its not about greed all the time. not every business decision comes from a malicious intent.
Valid for publishers who only care about $$$ (and not just simply making $$$, but making more $$$). and see it as business, not as art. Not valid for actual goal of reaching more people with the art they create. The usual conflict of interests built into the commercialization of art, only applied to the audience aspect of it.
It is enough, because costs of "huge" are not platform dependent. They already spend all that. As I said, porting part is cheap today. I doubt though you researched it to speculate. Developers who work on it did.
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It is worse for the audience they exclude. In this case Linux users. Console exclusives are not exactly same example, there exclusivity is driven by certain store owners like Sony and MS (or Epic today as well) paying developers for excluding all other users. I.e. they do that nasty thing for money very explicitly. I see no excuse for it, it's just greed infused with anti-competitive interests of those stores.
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ok, lets look at this.
this is part of the issue. the issue being that, the market isn't really that big. it doesn't have the space for everything to coexist like windows does. this is part of the issue by itself. this works in tandem with needing so much more money to break even on a game of this budget and size.
lets look at paradox.
yes, they port some games to Linux, but...lets look at what they did. the last two games they ported were Battletech and Cities Skylines.
now, they're already talking about shrinking profits on these...but what were they working with to begin with?
Cities Skylines was like a 2 GB game. the vast change in the scope of the game certainly makes porting easier. this game is probably gonna be north of 80. its just so much more complex and has so many more assets to transfer and test. what might be financially viable for Paradox might not be here. its a lot more work.
Battletech had a budget of 1 mil and crowdfunded another 2.7 mil.
making profit on those margins is just an entirely different convo to have compared to a game that's gonna be in the 80-100 mil budget range.
I already answered you, the size doesn't matter much for platform specific expenses. Due to size part being not platform dependent, and platform dependent proper being a small percentage of the total cost (and going down, as cross platform technologies only improve). So it's not about costs so much as about making profit vs making more profit. The later is a problem that's not easy to fix.
Shrinking profits due to market growth (supply outpacing demand) is an interesting thing (which actually highlights that market is growing, though slowly), but I suppose that will naturally compensate and balance out. Also, huge and high quality games actually have a lot easier time standing out, so it's not a major issue for them. I.e. CDPR in particular aren't ones that worry about market being overcrowded, since they are making one of a kind games in general - they are like a league in itself.
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it matters because there's still testing and issues that crop up in the port. they're not just hitting a button and turning a Jpeg into a PNG. the size is about how much QA they're gonna have to do. especially if it doesn't have support for like, Vulkan or OpenGL, at the start. there's just more code involved and more stuff that could break down in the port process.
Let's assume CDPR were smart enough to avoid costly lock-in, so they are using Vulkan and etc. and etc. to make sure they are portable. I.e. with good engine design, costs of porting are not big. (May be they don't, we don't have the info, but nothing should have stopped them at least, like other developers demonstrate). Likelihood of better cross platform tools like Vulkan used also gets higher, when they are considering Stadia release (which runs on Linux and also requires using Vulkan).
And support costs actually go both ways. I.e. cross platform coverage exposes flaws in the code, fixing which benefits all platforms, in result increasing the quality of the product. So it's a good thing, not a bad one. For bigger studios especially it's a major plus. It's for smaller ones that don't have big codebase this benefit is not as important.
And support costs actually go both ways. I.e. cross platform coverage exposes flaws in the code, fixing which benefits all platforms, in result increasing the quality of the product. So it's a good thing, not a bad one. For bigger studios especially it's a major plus. It's for smaller ones that don't have big codebase this benefit is not as important.
Stadia is the only thing that makes this even possible. bif they don't go for it, that pretty much kills any reason to port to Linux.
unless its a platform specific issue. which can and does happen.
It does, but deeper issues in the code are the most costly ones. I.e. bad design leading to worse performance and so on. Cross platform development exposes a lot of such stuff. And it pays off, if quality is important.
if it performs poorly on Linux and not windows, then that's not a bad design issue for the windows base, but something costly for the Linux base.
there's so much that can go wrong. [Snipped -- SigilFey]
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If it performs poorly anywhere, it means the code is bad already, and Windows just obscures the problem. That's the point. [Snipped -- SigilFey]
It happens, see what actual developers say about it. They see it as a plus to be able to catch such stuff rather than to sweep it under the rug. Again, quality must matter in such case. Those who make throwaway engines might not care.
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