We're living in a weird world with Sony's Shuhei Yoshida excited about a Linux handheld

What I'm about to say is going to be EXTREMELY optimistic...but with Microsoft's recent moves, I really hope the Steam Deck succeeds and Sony dives in with it. Whatever you think about Valve, what they're pushing would allow for a more open ecosystem for video games going forward than anything from Microsoft.


Last edited by CyborgZeta on 25 January 2022 at 7:39 pm UTC

Sure, private company, selfish, gaming is not same as hardware, closed garden etc. BUT let's not forget:

- Sony had their own distro, as mentioned:

For the younger folks around here, Sony has already released their own Linux distribution before.

- Installing Gentoo on PS4 was a thing for a while.
- As PS5 came out, we may not get the console, but controllers were in stores, and a Sony employee contributed the controller driver for the kernel
- Due to Sony's open device program, Xperia phones have been the de-facto standard for Linux-based mobile OS, especially Sailfish which today supports up to Xperia 1 II.

Sure, private company, selfish, gaming is not same as hardware, closed garden etc. BUT let's not forget:

- Sony had their own distro, as mentioned:

For the younger folks around here, Sony has already released their own Linux distribution before.

- Installing Gentoo on PS4 was a thing for a while.
- As PS5 came out, we may not get the console, but controllers were in stores, and a Sony employee contributed the controller driver for the kernel
- Due to Sony's open device program, Xperia phones have been the de-facto standard for Linux-based mobile OS, especially Sailfish which today supports up to Xperia 1 II.

PS2 had an actual Linux kit for it. https://archiveos.org/linux-for-ps2/

I wonder why Sony are porting their games to the competitor's operating system instead of doing it for an own Linux distro.

I guess the PS5 operative system is technically more close to Linux than to Windows

Because they want to sell games?

Interesting maybe we will see some support directly with Steamdeck and Playstation. maybe remote play, split-screen, using the steamdeck as a controller with a second screen display in playstation games and maybe playing steamdeck games / steam games on the playstation using in home game streaming. I am sure many many other ideas.

It's more like you missed the point entirely to focus on capitalism.

No, I don't think I missed the point. I just happen to look at this topic differently. For me, this is not strange at all. For you, it is.

It's just a figure of speech, to point out how strange this all is for Linux gamers.

English is not my native tongue, but are "weird" and "strange" not pretty much synonymous in this context? Or am I missing what you're saying?

Also, their exclusivity absolutely did work out, God of War for example sold tens of millions of copies on PlayStation, so that's entirely besides the point.

That makes no sense to me. If the exclusitivity did work out, why are they making things less exclusive over time? This is not beside the point for me, and shouldn't be beside of anyone, because this is literally the topic. I honestly have no idea why you suddenly state that this is "besides the point".

For me, this is not strange at all. For you, it is.

You really don't think it's strange to boot up previously exclusive PlayStation and Xbox games on Linux? Okay then. I have nothing more to say, because not long ago at all that was a complete fantasy.

You really don't think it's strange to boot up previously exclusive PlayStation and Xbox games on Linux? Okay then. I have nothing more to say, because not long ago at all that was a complete fantasy.

Do you have any good explanation for Sony doing this other than profit?

That makes no sense to me. If the exclusitivity did work out, why are they making things less exclusive over time? This is not beside the point for me, and shouldn't be beside of anyone, because this is literally the topic. I honestly have no idea why you suddenly state that this is "besides the point".

Exclusive games did work out great for them. Then they realized how much untapped revenue there is in PC gaming sales. Think about it this way; the PS4/PS5 are basically PC hardware shoved into odd looking (and loud) cases. The games use OpenGL (or an offshoot of it), so porting them to DirectX or Vulkan should be fairly straight forward, and since all the art exists already, there is fairly minimal amount of development time for opening up games to a whole new group of players. So once a PS# exclusive game's sales hit that curve where either 1) everyone has already bought it at full price that is going to. 2) there have been enough sales that people who are going to buy it have bought it on sale. So the revenue stream for those games are done. Boom, more sales instantly because the game now works on the PC, so anyone who is a Xbox/Nintendo/PC only gamer can also be a Sony customer! More Money!

Exclusive games never made much sense to me anyhow. Sure they made sense when the console itself made profit, but I'm betting for the price of the hardware in the PS5, that they are no longer making any profit on the hardware and only make profit on the games.

I've actually never felt Sony were much against Linux at all. Keep in mind that on their PS3 they even allowed Linux to be installed as "otherOS". It was only removed via patching when someone found a way to hack the PS3 OS and open for piracy via that feature.

Exclusive games never made much sense to me anyhow. Sure they made sense when the console itself made profit, but I'm betting for the price of the hardware in the PS5, that they are no longer making any profit on the hardware and only make profit on the games.

They've always made their profit primarily via software sales (including licencing) and not the hardware (consoles). That's really why exclusivity to push hardware made sense - because then the customers also purchased the OTHER games on their platform (ergo revenue).


Last edited by Beamboom on 26 January 2022 at 6:40 pm UTC

I wonder why Sony are porting their games to the competitor's operating system instead of doing it for an own Linux distro.

I guess the PS5 operative system is technically more close to Linux than to Windows

As far as I remember it's based on BSD (same as Mac OS, just having used a different BSD version). At least older versions were, but they might be using something new/different now.

I wonder why Sony are porting their games to the competitor's operating system instead of doing it for an own Linux distro.

I guess the PS5 operative system is technically more close to Linux than to Windows

As far as I remember it's based on BSD (same as Mac OS, just having used a different BSD version). At least older versions were, but they might be using something new/different now.

Ah MacOS... Darwin kernel, Mach64 based, with BSD-ish userland, and banned GPLv3 software... yay, let's ship with a 15 year old version of rsync!

Sorry, was running into issues like that with macOS Monterey on my M1 max... was irritated I had to install the newer version from Brew. It is interesting why exactly they don't ship any GPLv3 software, but you'd think they'd attempt to find alternatives for such things. So far that I know of, they've only replaced bash with zsh, and coded their own samba replacement...

That makes no sense to me. If the exclusitivity did work out, why are they making things less exclusive over time? This is not beside the point for me, and shouldn't be beside of anyone, because this is literally the topic. I honestly have no idea why you suddenly state that this is "besides the point".

Exclusive games did work out great for them. Then they realized how much untapped revenue there is in PC gaming sales. Think about it this way; the PS4/PS5 are basically PC hardware shoved into odd looking (and loud) cases. The games use OpenGL (or an offshoot of it), so porting them to DirectX or Vulkan should be fairly straight forward, and since all the art exists already, there is fairly minimal amount of development time for opening up games to a whole new group of players. So once a PS# exclusive game's sales hit that curve where either 1) everyone has already bought it at full price that is going to. 2) there have been enough sales that people who are going to buy it have bought it on sale. So the revenue stream for those games are done. Boom, more sales instantly because the game now works on the PC, so anyone who is a Xbox/Nintendo/PC only gamer can also be a Sony customer! More Money!

Exclusive games never made much sense to me anyhow. Sure they made sense when the console itself made profit, but I'm betting for the price of the hardware in the PS5, that they are no longer making any profit on the hardware and only make profit on the games.

Yep! You are both right, but was Sony forced to support the Steam Deck? Couldn't they just release their builds for Windows and be gone with it? Then, if it works on the Steam Deck, consider it a nice to have?

It's the extra step to aknowledge the existence of the Steam Deck, support it and, by association, support Linux that amazes Liam. This is the angle that he wanted to highlight.

Got it right Liam? Because I share the same point of view.

I wonder why Sony are porting their games to the competitor's operating system instead of doing it for an own Linux distro.

I guess the PS5 operative system is technically more close to Linux than to Windows

As far as I remember it's based on BSD (same as Mac OS, just having used a different BSD version). At least older versions were, but they might be using something new/different now.

Not sure about the PS5 but the ps4 "Orbis" OS is FreeBSD9

That makes no sense to me. If the exclusitivity did work out, why are they making things less exclusive over time? This is not beside the point for me, and shouldn't be beside of anyone, because this is literally the topic. I honestly have no idea why you suddenly state that this is "besides the point".

Exclusive games did work out great for them. Then they realized how much untapped revenue there is in PC gaming sales. Think about it this way; the PS4/PS5 are basically PC hardware shoved into odd looking (and loud) cases. The games use OpenGL (or an offshoot of it), so porting them to DirectX or Vulkan should be fairly straight forward, and since all the art exists already, there is fairly minimal amount of development time for opening up games to a whole new group of players. So once a PS# exclusive game's sales hit that curve where either 1) everyone has already bought it at full price that is going to. 2) there have been enough sales that people who are going to buy it have bought it on sale. So the revenue stream for those games are done. Boom, more sales instantly because the game now works on the PC, so anyone who is a Xbox/Nintendo/PC only gamer can also be a Sony customer! More Money!

Exclusive games never made much sense to me anyhow. Sure they made sense when the console itself made profit, but I'm betting for the price of the hardware in the PS5, that they are no longer making any profit on the hardware and only make profit on the games.

Yep! You are both right, but was Sony forced to support the Steam Deck? Couldn't they just release their builds for Windows and be gone with it? Then, if it works on the Steam Deck, consider it a nice to have?

It's the extra step to aknowledge the existence of the Steam Deck, support it and, by association, support Linux that amazes Liam. This is the angle that he wanted to highlight.

Got it right Liam? Because I share the same point of view.

This is pretty much my thought too. Though with Sony's history of being Linux friendly... then not, then again... then at least using open source stuff... it makes sense. I think with their mindset, it's simply a matter of 'hey, new platform, maybe we can sell more games!' Think of it like Sega. They also publish games (or at least allow them to be ported by someone else) for Linux, they no longer have their own hardware platform to make exclusive games for, but likely make far more money now than they did with say selling the Dreamcast. Sonic popping up on the Nintendo is weird for us old people who remember the hardcore rivalry that was there.

I've actually never felt Sony were much against Linux at all. Keep in mind that on their PS3 they even allowed Linux to be installed as "otherOS".

They sold the PS3 with Linux support in order to save on import tax, because it technically can be imported as "home computing device", instead of "gaming console". That's literally the only reason why they did that. Not because they "love Linux" or something.

I've actually never felt Sony were much against Linux at all. Keep in mind that on their PS3 they even allowed Linux to be installed as "otherOS".

They sold the PS3 with Linux support in order to save on import tax, because it technically can be imported as "home computing device", instead of "gaming console". That's literally the only reason why they did that. Not because they "love Linux" or something.

Ooh, I didn't know about that!

I've actually never felt Sony were much against Linux at all. Keep in mind that on their PS3 they even allowed Linux to be installed as "otherOS".

They sold the PS3 with Linux support in order to save on import tax, because it technically can be imported as "home computing device", instead of "gaming console". That's literally the only reason why they did that. Not because they "love Linux" or something.

Well, the PS2 had a Linux kit for it. So there were other reasons.

Well, the PS2 had a Linux kit for it. So there were other reasons.

They did that, of course, for the very same reason. Sony tried to export the PS2 as home computer as well.