"People buy consoles not only because they want exclusives but also because they don't want a gaming computer, they want a maintenance free gaming machine hooked up to their TV in the living room."
you maybe right, buy why they didnt buy steam machines?


"Even if they get paid more than they would have made on other platforms, they have limited their exposure. "
yeah, beacause i'm pretty sure no one knew tombraider os street fighter before microsoft/sony signed an temporaray exclusivity deal with then...

" Some developers would still choose to make games for one or a limited number of platforms,"
that is true for games that arent so popular the company may bet on the platform where most of their consumers are, if the cost of doing multiplatform is greater than the reward.

"They are officially available and have been for a while. If you search the steam store for steam machines, you get links out to Dell, Syber and a couple of others. They have been featured on the Steam Store. They really have been released. "
they didnt even update the thumbnail, there are 3 pictures but only 2 of then work and one of then is pointing to the wrong product.
there are only 2 oem partners left.

"Eh? They advertise Steam Machines on their store there. They list no less than 5 different brands."
are you fucking kidding me? i'm talking about tv ads, popunder on webpages, banners on the real world, or ads that get at least 1 million of views on youtube, is that asking to much?
they did an poor job at marketing and didn't try again enough times to make it sucefully.

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Quoting: BeamboomWhy are we writing off SteamOS already? We know Valve? We know Valve-time?
There's no announcement that they have ended the SteamOS project. This will take time. Valve time.

SteamOS haven't even gotten out of beta yet - that's why there's no SteamMachines (with a very few experimental exceptions). It's not officially available yet - you can participate as a beta tester if you like, but it's not meant for public consumption.

One can discuss the period behind us, and by God that's been discussed a lot now, but it's not gone. It's not over. Not yet.

there are 2 failures with this.

1)SteamOS haven't even gotten out of beta yet
WTF? the product is being sold! imagine if you purchase an car, then during an curve at an high speed you realize you cant turn at high speeds, you almost die and when you contact the support, they say, "oh we sold you an beta products, its not ready yet, so you will have to wait for it to be ready to be able to fully enjoy it" would you acept it? and even worse, you ask when it will be ready? aaaany moment now.... yeah, some day it will, it could take centuries but certainly one day it will.
would you be thankfully to have invested money on a product that you cant use? or be pissed off and ask for an refund or sue the company?

2)the reason why valve long time strategy did work, was because people already purchased computers anyway, they didnt buy computers and waited for it to be usefull, they purchased it after they knew they can use it for something, then they got new features and new reasons to buy over time and one day one of those features were games. consoles on the other hand dont sell unless they have games, they can sell if people believe they will have more games someday, but they will end up disapointed and not wanting to bet in the brand anymore.

hardware have an limited life-span, that is why consoles are split between generations.
people buy an new machine to play the lastest games otherwise they would stick to what they already have.
why would anyone buy an steam machine? so in the future the games they want to play may be avaliable for steamOS? even if it can't run on their machines because the minimum requirements where higher? that defeat the purpose of the sale/product itself! no one want buy and wait.
even if they buy, they could install windows on it anyway.
even worse, they can use, think that it sucks, realize it is linux and think it sucks, try to sell to someone else for cheaper and make another person repeat the cicle.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeI don't know how one could even gauge whether or not Steam Machines have failed. Companies are still making them, right? How have they failed in that case?

Having lived through the life of the Atari Jaguar (as short as it was) and the fact that it lives off of homebrew titles still, I'd consider that a failure in the mainstream, but people still love it. Steam Machines are still being made, more games are being released for it, and the library is getting larger every day. So really, how are they a failure? Have they sold millions of units? No because they have various versions. We'd have to count every machine that has pre-installed SteamOS to count it, and I don't see Dell, Zotac, Syber, etc releasing sales numbers yet.

every steam machine includes an steam controller, and steam controller are sold separately, also, every console have support at least 4 controllers and steam controllers work on Pc too, valve stoped marketing steam machines, or featuring it on their store, but they do with controller, they arent planing ship it world wide or exapand their market to other countries but they do with the controller and link.
and steam controller sold less than 1 million of copies

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Quoting: slaapliedjeThere are no such things as Exclusives!!! As soon as the PC is powerful enough, there will be an emulator for them. :)

At least that's how I look at it. Game consoles are stagnant hardware platforms. And anymore, they literally are chunks of x86 compatible hardware with a specific OS. Virtualize that OS and you can run any of the 'Exclusives' eventually.

this is the only generation that consoles are using x86.
ok, xbox original was x86, but only it.
and even in the current gen, wiiU is still powerpc.

as for perfect emulation, there is no such thing as perfect emulation:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/

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Quoting: m2mg2

Quoting: denyasisI am in the same boat with exclusives, I think they are a bad idea, but I seen how they can work to the advantage of the console company.

Anecdotally, my co-workers who are console gamers all own multiple consoles, specifically due to exclusivity. I've actually heard this exact conversation many times:

"Hey bro, you should go get [console X] so we can play [game y] together!"
and usually right after payday, some one comes up and says "Hey I got the console and game, wanna play?"

Now yes, they just dropped several hundred dollars for to play one game, but as calvin pointed out, they now have a system guaranteed to play every game released for that console and they are unlikely to only ever purchase one game over the lifetime of the console ("Hey bro, [games y 2] just came out, are you getting it?).

While it's just my personal experience, I can see how exclusives to work for the console company from a business point of view. I still think they are a bad idea, especially for linux. I think our user-base is too small to make it a sound financial strategy.

Yes, they are good for console companies. They are bad for everyone else though.

The developer/publishers game ends up with a smaller player base (not everyone that wants to play the game is willing to or has the money for multiple consoles) and users either miss out or have to buy a whole additional piece of hardware. You double your console spending budget that would have been better used buying more games. The games are already going to be worthless when the next generation console come out, now not only do your games have a lifespan but you have less of them because you had to buy a whole different console.

ok, lets assume that your most profitable game ever made 200 millions in profit, but each new game you made, you sold less than the previous. (eg: 200, 180, 150, 110....) and you reinvest allmost everything that you made in profit to make an new game...
if some one off you 1 billion for exclusivity, would you refuse?
companies that have an exclusivity deal have nothing to lose with the deal, nothing. if they sell 0 copies they already made profit.
if they sell, even better.
companies that make consoles give more money to the game developer than the game will make in profit, why? because they will help sell the console, so the install base of the console grow and they make more money in each game sold for the platform.
you could argue that gamers are the ones who lose, but i will discuss this a bit:
what would happen if nintendo didnt make exclusives for their consoles anymore nor paid for thirdyparty exclusives? sony did the same, microsoft the same with xbox.
what would happen?
nintendo would not sell any console, nor sony neither microsoft.
all games would be done to windows, some to mac, and a few to linux.

we wouldnt have an world without exclusives because windows would still have 7000 exclusive games (only counting steam) 4000 that have an version for win and mac and the 3000 ones left that have an version for linux (mostly indies) would also be avaliable for win/mac so most of people wouldnt consider swich for linux anyway.
as you can see, even on an windows without exclusives, we would still have exclusives due to direcx or marketshare (companys that dont want to support, because the cost of support an platform is greater than the profit from it)

and different from what the stupid people who say: "pc master racers" think, if PC won, they wouldnt be able to play all their games on windows.
why? becasue microsoft would do special versions such as "windows home, premium, ultimate" where only the most expensive can play all the games (they would do exclusivity deals anyway)
or things like "buy the ultimate to unlock the full potential of your computer!" for those who want to play on ultra.

at least with consoles around, microsoft have an reason to keep improving their products instead of let then years without any major evolution while they try to dominate other markets (as they did with the internet explorer)

so an world without exclusives would never exist, if we insist in pursue this what we will got instead is an world with thousands of windows exclusives and no other option to gaming (no nintendo, no sony) if we were lucky enough to microsoft not doing what nintendo did when they were the major gaming platform: if you want to make games to our console, you can only make games for our platform.

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Quoting: ElectricPrismThis article outlines a term that I've created to describe the situation -- LinuxTax™
.

for those games with an 10% performance difference, i agree that the "Linuxtax™" solves the problem, but for those who perform 50/80% worse as said by another comment, i doubt it.

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What's interesting is that they didn't use SteamOS for the demo, what are your thoughts as to why they used Kubuntu?

maybe they want to show that:
it will work on other linux distributions too, such as ubuntu, not only SteamOS.
and it will work on other DE too, not only Unity, so they show'd KDE instead of Unity.

or maybe the Steam Machines arent powerfull enough, so if they used the SteamOS, it could imply that it would run on any steam machine...

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now we're talking!

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Quoting: t3gI hope this developer realizes that Epic is going to take his code, lock it down, not give it back to the community (it's not GPL), and then make millions of dollars from publishers while he gets $0 and has to resort to the good will of a "community" to fund his efforts to help Epic keep their code proprietary.

If the code was going to remain open for everyone to use, then his efforts aren't wasted as others can learn from it and use that knowledge for their own games. But since he insists on contributing to the existence of non-free software free of charge, he's a fool.

except that he is charging for it, and will not receive $0 if we donate?

the issue is, if we dont do anything, unreal games performance on linux will suck, if we do, we will be helping an proprietary software company.

either you let the windows proprietary windows and its ecosystem dominate the market, or you let epic do that, there is no perfect solution here, but an double edge.

if you care so much about this, why you buy proprietary games on steam (that is also proprietary) anyway?

linux need good game ports, otherwise it will not get new users.

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"it's looking like Steam Machines may stall hard. So what is out now may end up being all there ever is. But I sure would like to be proven wrong on that."
[edit] i forgot to comment that.
alienware relased an new model recently so its very unlikely.


"Good products are what should drive sales"
in a perfect world, consumers are smart and do the right decision, but in a perfect world they already use linux on desktop anyway.
in the real world, companies put 75% of their bugdet on maerket instead of Research/Development, only 25% goes to R/D, Q/A etc.
if an good product were what drive sales, gamecube would sell more than ps2, it was stronger.
people would be using linux because it have an better performance (but since they arent, we get poor ports and poor performance as an result)


"Also being released after Windows can be turned around - majority of casual games really don't care when games are released. "
80% of the sales of an AAA are done in the first 2 months after the relase.

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