Then you'll demonstrate that you don't need the Linux version and complaining that developers aren't eager to release it would be pointless.
That would be true under the circumstance that there is a large market for the platform they invest in, and that simply isn't the case.
No, that's also follower's mentality. That's true when there is potential for that market. That's innovator's mentality.
Innovators were participating in Khronos Vulkan group shaping the new generation APIs in practice. Major engine developers did that.
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The point is that if you wish the revolutionize the PC gaming market and have enough people switch over to Linux that it will actually be profitable for companies to release their games for Unix based operating system, then you first need to make sure that the overall experience equals or exceeds that of the competing platform. This means not only having games which run well under the platform but also drivers which support the latest technology. A lot of people do use multi-gpu solutions, so yes, it would be a requirement.
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You are of course aware that CD Projekt already took that step as "innovators" with the GOG platform a long time ago. By all appearances that was not a profitable step given as they almost seem to have given up on it. If the Linux platform had been profitable enough then they would already have had a version of The Witcher 3 ready for it. I am simply trying to tell you that it cannot succeed given the current state of gaming on Linux.
Sure. That was a good step, which they took after several years of their users asking them to enable Linux games sales through GOG and all other major distributors doing it before them. But I'm surely grateful - it's good that GOG did it.
Again, if you use bean counter logic, they should just make console games and be done with it.
Linux gaming not only can succeed - it's rapidly growing for several years already, and innovators are fully involved in making things better there. Followers of course can't care less.
The point I tried to make here is that they have already acted as "innovators", and that seemed to have failed. You somehow took that in a different direction.
Do you claim that I have committed a logical fallacy? If so, please explain. Either way, the PC market is obviously a profitable market given how well The Witcher 3 did there. So no, only developing for consoles is not the way to go in order to maximize profit.
Do you have any evidence to support that Linux users have increased due to gaming in recent years? Of course the market will increase upon release of platforms such as SteamOS, but that is simply because there was no platform before. The 2-3% of Linux users today simply won't cut it. You would essentially have to show that there is a correlation between gaming on Linux and an increase in Linux users in general.
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How exactly it failed if GOG adds new Linux games regularly? Also, GOG is their separate business (distribution) from their game development (studio). While GOG profits of course help CDPR to make games, I don't see why you need to compare GOG innovation to CDPR gaming innovation. They are in different things.
I claim that bean counter logic is suitable for legacy publishers who also use the logic of mass market and such. They are followers who only pursue what is already very established and doesn't pose any challenges. Innovators can pursue something that has less explored markets, and they are first to achieve something there. Linux market has the potential - there is no doubt about that.
I have the evidence that Linux gaming has increased in recent years. That's public data. Not only more games come out for Linux all the time, all major engines added Linux support and all major distributors started selling Linux games. All that happened in the span of several years. Anyone could notice that.
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Simply because GOG operates at a lower level than CDPR do. CDPR releases games meanwhile GOG distributes a wide range of games. The Witcher 3 is not the only game in the world and the majority of people play different games. If you wish for the market to grow then you must target all games, not just one, and hence it is GOG that needs to be the innovator, not CDPR. CDPR can help GOG by porting The Witcher 3, but it will ultimately change very little since other triple A titles also need to be ported.
But you see this is precisely how companies think, it is a simple matter of supply and demand. It doesn't mean that I agree that it should be the governing factor, but it is. In order for a company to innovate there needs to be a reasonable probability of success. People simply do not care about Linux, and that is the problem here. In other words, countering by inferring that I use "bean counter logic" is completely vacuous, as you are not addressing the issue at hand.
You should read what I wrote again. The 2-3% of Linux users simply do not cut it, it isn't a market large enough, a market by the way which to a large extent is populated by hackers and people of academia such as people doing physics, like me. The majority of those people do not care the slightest bit about gaming, and those that do are already dual booting.
In order for your point to be valid, you need to actually show that an increase of gaming on Linux results in an increase in Linux users, in other words you have to show that there is a correlation between the two. If there is no correlation, then an increase in gaming on Linux will ultimately be staggered, and the profits will never be able to go high enough.
GOG is a major part of their profits, and if you look at their strategy they plan to expand it much further. So I wouldn't call it lower level in any way. Over time it's GOG that will be the main profit source for them.
If you wish the market to grow, you should contribute to growing it. As simple as that. So those who make Linux games literally help it grow.
I already explained the difference between followers and innovators. To summarize, former only enter existing markets, later create markets. Ponder that.
See above. Those who invest in the market help it grow. Followers sit and wait. And Linux gaming market is now growing. So which one CDPR is? If they develop Linux games today and help shaping new graphics APIs (Vulkan) that help advancing that - they are innovators. If not - they are followers. Check those who participated in Vulkan development and you'll find a number of gaming companies there. Those are innovators who don't use bean counter logic, but look at potential. Without innovation things will be stagnated forever and it will surely satisfy bean counters just fine. For them, the less change there is - the better.
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You either do not understand what it is I am trying to tell you, or you are simply ignoring the issues I am trying to bring up. Either way I neither have time nor any interest to keep such a discussion going, so I will leave it here.
I understood your point which you explained clearly. I.e. if market is small there is no point to bother with it. I explained above why it's bean counter logic and why quite a number of companies don't agree with it because they are innovators. And we are lucky that there are innovators around, otherwise like I said, we would have complete stagnation.
You don't need to be able to max out a game to enjoy it. I actually prefer it when devs add settings that pretty much no PC today can max out. Means I can come back to the game in 10 years and it'll actually look better.
But just look at the Steam hardware survey; the majority of users actually have fairly modest PCs, so no, SLI is not a requirement for playing the game.
Your last statement is obviously not true, there are people who care about gaming and don't dual boot.
But about your other point that 2-3% isn't enough: you have to also consider the absolute number. In the end, whether a port is profitable depends on how many people buy it, not on how many % that is out of some group. Last I read, Steam had 125 million users, that was last February, and Steam has been growing rather rapidly in recent years. So the fact that the percentage of Linux users is constant actually means that the absolute number of Linux users is increasing. 1% Linux users is then still more than 1.25 million people, likely more at this point. And if you look at sales data, quite often the Linux sales are closer to 2-3%, so Linux users buy more like 2-4 million people.
GOG has, as far as I know, never published numbers, but I suspect they are relatively more popular on Linux because DRM-free, but the absolute numbers are still small. The gamingonlinux.com survey shows GOG at around 20%, and Steam at ~90%, so there are max ~10% Linux gamers exclusively on GOG (or humble).
Of course, it then depends on how much the port actually costs, and the longer it takes, the less they'll make off it because the game gets cheaper. If they are anyway porting to Vulkan, making a Linux version might not be much extra cost. But if they have to tear apart their engine and rebuild it with OpenGL and then throw it away after one game, it's likely not worth it.
I just wished they would make some kind of statement whether it's still planned at all at this point. I don't mind waiting (well, I do, but I can deal with that), but not knowing at all is just frustrating.
The point here was not to say that there will be no one who enjoys the game if there isn't sli/crossfire support for the platform. The point is that if things such as sli/crossfire doesn't work for the platform but it does for others, then the competing platform will be more compelling in general. This is especially true when the competing platform already has the majority of the user base, such as Windows. In order for people to migrate they need to be given several good reasons to do so, that simply isn't the case, and very few people care about open source, unfortunately.
Note that I said the majority of people here, that is a big difference, I do not claim that every Linux user who plays games is dual booting, that is an absurd extension of my statement and it borders on to the logical fallacy of the straw man.
It does not mean that the number of Linux users is increasing, it may, and I stress the may, only mean that already existing Linux users have started using platforms such as SteamOS and GOG, simply because prior to those platforms there was absolutely nothing viable for us. This is why I brought up the issue of correlation. An increase in users of SteamOS does not necessarily mean an increase in users of Linux. In order for there to be correlation you need to show that the overall users of Linux is increasing as the users of platforms such as SteamOS and GOG increases, otherwise there is no migration from Windows to Linux. A migration by the way, which is necessary in order for the platform to become profitable.
I am included in that group by the way, as I suspect many others are, and I occasionally play games like Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity. The bottom line is that I still dual boot and prefer to play under Windows because the tools I need are not available under Linux, yet.
CDPR's recent reluctance to release information about their upcoming games etc, is likely a consequence of the way they were treated in regards to Witcher 3. They released a lot of information about the game two years prior to release and showed videos of the current state of the game. When the game was launched people remarked on the noticeable "downgrade" of the graphics and put a lot of blame on CDPR for it, blame which ultimately could cause them to lose sales. The bottom line is that being open about the development is not always profitable, and that applies here as well.
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Hey there, chaps, just a gentle friendly reminder to, please, keep this discussion respectful of all parties. Thank you. Carry on.
And Humble Bundle sales show even higher percentage of Linux sales, even up to 10%. Steam percentage is pretty useless in general, because it's a cumulative number and not all games on Steam are cross platform. More useful numbers come from sales per OS for cross platform games which are released for all systems on day one. Steam doesn't offer such data at all.
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Indeed. A lot of Linux users are avoiding DRMed services including Steam, so using Steam as the only source of estimation is a bad idea.
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+ many. Keeping community in the dark is worse than saying what they are doing or not doing about it. Especially after all their previous confirmations and SteamOS ads.
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It doesn't mean it's not increasing as well. Those who make Linux games and contribute to tools (like Vulkan) help increasing it. Those who don't - don't. That's about it.
It's a question of how much open. They weren't too open about TW3 development. Yes, they showed work in progress in advance, but then showed nothing and said nothing about changing graphics until the very release. So having a backlash was to be expected, and their statement that they didn't think anyone would care always puzzled me. Instead of keeping silent they could publish regular work in progress updates like crowdfunded projects do, explaining reasons for any changes along the way.
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Yeah, the Linux version is dead. Thanks to CDPR to have persuaded us in our expectations...
I hope now that we will Cyberpunk with Dx12 and Vulkan ...
I hope now that we will Cyberpunk with Dx12 and Vulkan ...
May be not yet dead, but something changed for the worse. If before CDPR were saying that they are working on it, now they are only "looking into it". I'd say it doesn't sound very optimistic.
Thanks to @Krull32 for pointing out this interview:
So while it's nowhere guaranteed, it gives some crude ETA of at least another 2 years. Which in total will be pretty similar to TW2 - 3 years after the initial release.
Now combine that with what Balasz Torok said in the past, that in order to bring TW3 back to that original look-n-feel, they'd need to rewrite the engine in new generation APIs. And this can mean that Vulkan can be part of the enhanced edition. Therefore it's reasonable to expect that any Linux development will also depend on it.
So while it's nowhere guaranteed, it gives some crude ETA of at least another 2 years. Which in total will be pretty similar to TW2 - 3 years after the initial release.
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@arkhenon: Ah, thanks for pointing it out. That's more optimistic and matches better to what they said about working on TW3 in 2016.