DICE Talks About Steam Machines, Linux Gaming
DICE believes Steam Machines will be good for the console market.
DICE creative director Lars Gustavsson told Polygon on Saturday that one single "killer" game is all the Linux platform needs to explode its way into mainstream gaming. He pointed to Halo and how it helped make the original Xbox highly competitive despite Microsoft's "rookie" status in the console market. Thus, even though Linux is easily accessible, the platform still needs its own flagship game to really motivate player interest.
"I think, even then, customers are getting more and more convenient, so you really need to convince them how can they marry it into their daily lives and make [it] an integral part of their lives," he explained. He also added that the studio has used Linux servers because it was a "superior operating system to do so."
He said that the studio "strongly" wants to get into Linux, and that Valve's SteamOS and the Steam Machines initiative will be good for the console market because these products will explore new, possibly better ways of consuming games than the current Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo method. However, he believes that eventually there will be less need for hardware and more on-demand gaming experiences.
"I think, hopefully, competition usually means a better experience for the customer. Sometimes. You know, was the VHS tape better than BetaMax? VHS won," he continued. "So it does not always go in the right direction but overall I think it is healthy with competition. It is truly welcomed, so that we can have better games in the future."
He also believes that indie game developers will help populate the Linux scene despite the platform's limited audience.
"With indie, for a long time, it seemed that it was only AAA title that will survive and then the explosion came with mobile and indie games," he said. "So I'm really happy to see that has swung back to where people say 'Well, will AAA titles survive? Are they mammoths that don't know that they are dead yet?' So, to me, I think that the possibilities are many and I think indies can build for Linux even though we don't have enormous audience," he said.
The full interview, which moves on to talk about Battlefield 4, can be read here. Honestly, it wouldn't be surprising if Valve was actually working on a "Halo" exclusive flagship shooter for SteamOS. Half-Life 3 perhaps?
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Both Wargames - Euro Escalation and Airland Battle,
All Source Engine games
Raven - Legacy of a Master Thief
ARMA Tactics
And just bought Amnesia - A Machine for Pigs - currently downloading.
Massively looking forward to Rome II Total War's Linux port
and Metro Last Light (due within the next couple of months I believe).
Crytek is also now developing using the latest OpenGL and porting their DirectX 11 engine and have hired developers.
The future is bright for Linux! Sooner or later people will realise that they are wasting their money on M$ bloatware, $$$ better spent on hardware and games.
A decade ago their was a good place for a console. They were less than $200, and you couldn't buy a computer anywhere near that and play top games on it. It's different today, their isn't enough of a price break, and it just makes games more expensive because devs have to deal with all those systems.
And Valve is adding another.
Valve didn't add anything, its the same good old PC + some OS improvments that are good for games but unusable for every day tasks. In terms of work developers will be doing nothing changed.
As for consoles, we buy them because of the games that won't get on PC, its that simple, noone cares whether can or can't play with PC.
P.S. Why do some people have PC for windows and Mac for Mac, its the same PC, they don't have PPC there for years already.
I completely agree. Im pretty sure valve will make HL3 available a few weeks on steamos first before windows. its logical, will definitely increase the steamos userbase exponentially and not piss off windows users.
No, not 4 platforms. Developers need to code for Mantle, and then everything else. The easiest way to reach Intel/Nvidia or non-Mantle Steambox users would be OpenGL. Two platforms.