Here's a very interesting development for the world of the open source Godot Engine, as a new company named W4 Games has been formed to push it further than ever before. Founded by Godot Engine veterans Juan Linietsky, Rémi Verschelde and Fabio Alessandrelli, and veteran entrepreneur Nicola Farronato the idea is to provide commercial assistance to developers of all sorts using Godot Engine.
One of the goals (there will be a number) is to help developers access console markets, which has been a problem for Godot Engine since it's fully open source and can't just include everything needed to publish on consoles as they've historically been restrictive with things like their SDK. So one goal of W4 Games is to help there, as their FAQ mentions:
W4 was created to satisfy commercial needs of the corporate game industry that are currently unaddressed, by providing products and services to companies that need them in order to move to Godot from other technologies. This includes services offering such as enterprise support plans and the possibility to access markets that were previously unreached by Godot, such as console platforms. Stay tuned for more details!
That's just one small part of it though, as their announcement explains:
W4 Games was formed to strengthen the Godot ecosystem by providing both enterprise and independent developers with a complementary suite of commercial products and services to successfully develop and publish video games to all existing platforms in the market. Further announcements about these products and services will be made over the coming weeks and months as they become available.
For anyone suddenly worried — Godot Engine remains community built, owned and run and will continue to be. This is just a few of their team hoping to keep pushing open source to the masses of developers out there.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: constIf a Switch2 had backwards compatibility, that would already be a big win for consumers. I doubt it.
I love my Deck to pieces, but there are quite a lot of reasons it can't really hurt the Switch.
1. Obviously availability just isn't there. How many Steam Decks are out there? Nintendo probably sells these numbers in weeks.
2. The Deck is a device for adult(ish) gamers for now and Switch is a family device. I bet >80% of the weekly Switch sales are birthday/christmas gifts to children, then maybe 10% for parents whose adult children hope they'll exercise with some sport game and then some replacements for old units. The whole childrens birthday/childrens christmas market is totally out of the decks reach and frankly, Valve doesn't seem to care about that market at all.
I have the impression the Deck opened up that niche on Steam, so developers targeting Steam will more often consider making family friendly games and developers making family friendly games for Switch will consider a PC port, yet that might just be a a shim...
....but frankly, there are other tasks to be tackled before that. And also, we don't need the Deck to gain any kind of dominancy. If SteamOS based devices sell 5 Million units (like 5% of Switch), we as Linux gamers would already be in a position we couldn't even imagine a few years back.
i couldnt disagree more.
0)switch 2 will have backward comp for sure.
0.5)deck can hurt switch for sure, nintendo isnt so strong when do have proper competition, if it was an completely different market then playstation/xbox sales wouldnt affect nintendo success during n64, gamecube and wiiU era.
1)avaliability is the only part i agree, but unless you plan to buy both devices, i think many consumers might wait insted of purchase something else when they have an clear preference for something that is yet to launch.
2)i agree that deck isnt good for children, its too big and heavy for then, but i disagree that switch only appeal to "family games", they even acept nsfw games, i dont think they can reach 111 milions of units focusing only on kids, sure their exclusives are family friendly, but as i stated before, exclusives arent enough to explain that many sales.
and finally i disagree we dont need deck to sell a lot, sure we wouldnt have the same problem to play as we had before, all games on steam and many from other stores will work on linux so there isnt a big reason to care what the rest of the world is using.
yet, without marketshare i dont see the other anti cheat solutions working on linux anytime soon, valve worked togheter with 2 companies then what about the rest?
not to mention other sofwares like substance painter etc, other niches that might not support linux.
Quoting: elmapulQuoting: constIf a Switch2 had backwards compatibility, that would already be a big win for consumers. I doubt it.
I love my Deck to pieces, but there are quite a lot of reasons it can't really hurt the Switch.
1. Obviously availability just isn't there. How many Steam Decks are out there? Nintendo probably sells these numbers in weeks.
2. The Deck is a device for adult(ish) gamers for now and Switch is a family device. I bet >80% of the weekly Switch sales are birthday/christmas gifts to children, then maybe 10% for parents whose adult children hope they'll exercise with some sport game and then some replacements for old units. The whole childrens birthday/childrens christmas market is totally out of the decks reach and frankly, Valve doesn't seem to care about that market at all.
I have the impression the Deck opened up that niche on Steam, so developers targeting Steam will more often consider making family friendly games and developers making family friendly games for Switch will consider a PC port, yet that might just be a a shim...
....but frankly, there are other tasks to be tackled before that. And also, we don't need the Deck to gain any kind of dominancy. If SteamOS based devices sell 5 Million units (like 5% of Switch), we as Linux gamers would already be in a position we couldn't even imagine a few years back.
i couldnt disagree more.
0)switch 2 will have backward comp for sure.
0.5)deck can hurt switch for sure, nintendo isnt so strong when do have proper competition, if it was an completely different market then playstation/xbox sales wouldnt affect nintendo success during n64, gamecube and wiiU era.
1)avaliability is the only part i agree, but unless you plan to buy both devices, i think many consumers might wait insted of purchase something else when they have an clear preference for something that is yet to launch.
2)i agree that deck isnt good for children, its too big and heavy for then, but i disagree that switch only appeal to "family games", they even acept nsfw games, i dont think they can reach 111 milions of units focusing only on kids, sure their exclusives are family friendly, but as i stated before, exclusives arent enough to explain that many sales.
and finally i disagree we dont need deck to sell a lot, sure we wouldnt have the same problem to play as we had before, all games on steam and many from other stores will work on linux so there isnt a big reason to care what the rest of the world is using.
yet, without marketshare i dont see the other anti cheat solutions working on linux anytime soon, valve worked togheter with 2 companies then what about the rest?
not to mention other sofwares like substance painter etc, other niches that might not support linux.
I'm open for a bet on 0. From how Nintendo behaved in the recent past and still does, I don't see why you'd think that.
0.5)Switch has always had good competition, unless you think it's the handheld format that sold it. Nintendo always had handhelds and they were always very successful with it.
1) For someone who knows they want a deck, sure. I'm one of those people, but I don't want a switch and if I wanted one, I'd bought it years ago.
2) I never said Switch was only for kids. It's proven to be kid friendly is what I said. There are alsa a lot of 3rd party developers producing kid friendly games that are mostly targeting the Switch as they did before with 3DS etc. And do you seriously belief there are still 300k people a week realizing they want a switch now after not owning one yet? Not saying parents don't want to game a little when they give it to their children. "Family device" is a good excuse. You don't get that excuse when buying a Deck, yet.
And finally 5Million units are 5Million units. Linux usershare would have overtaken MacOS which is a serious dooropener. And the effects of what deck does will reach over to more people exploring Linux, other handheld manufacturers taking notice, people realizing they can use SteamOS on a couch PC and other things that give momentum and momentum is what really counts. If Deck sells more then 5 Million units I wouldn't be bothered, though :)
Last edited by const on 12 August 2022 at 10:11 pm UTC
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