I'm not arguing the merits of Linux, or the future potential of it. I am saying right now it is an infinitely small portion of an already niche market. That's like the definition of irrelevant. Yet I always see people asking for Linux support for this and that.

Here is the history of games and Wine. Few gaming developer that didn't plan for a game run on Linux from the start make any special considerations for Linux or wine. I love using Wine myself, but there are issues, which get improved regularly and with more frequency, but are still present. Bioware Neverwinter Nights is a great example of making games that easily run on MS Windows and Linux. These guys made it easy to run in Linux Natively with minor setup hoops to allow people to run Linux based Neverwinter Nights server to host their adventures. Fantastic! Hothead games used speicfic libraries so that the Rainslick series could easily be made to run on all platform (I purchased mine on Linux, not windows). I've been told (and experience seems to reflect) that graphics are usually the biggest problem to port if you start on the wrong foot. "Wrong", meaning using a closed "standard" like DirectX rather than OpenGL.

Ironically, gaming developers are reporting that the latest version of OpenGL runs FASTER than DirectX 10 (and possibly 11 but I need to check that). Microsoft has a HUGE lobbying team, that will actively go after game developers and give them incentives to use DirectX instead of OpenGL. In Neverwinter Nights 2, I read it backfired and there were graphics performance issues. My guess is there is some bad news and good news for Wine users:

bad news, Witcher 2 is unlikely to work well on Wine right now. Its engine I believe is designed around DirectX, and using advanced sound and graphics API calls. Probably LOTS of tweaks will be needed. Heck the game isn't really finished yet (patches...) so can you blame them.

Good news: The game seems to be better overall on Windws XP than Windows 7 so the tweaks required to get it to work reasonably well on Wine will be faster than many games that were more optimized for Windws 7/Vista.(I.e. DirectX11 which is only on Vista/7)

The way that game developers could make it easier to port to MacOS (and Linux) is to use OpenGL as the foundation of their graphics instead DirectX, which even big game developers have complained is more difficult to use. Even developers have commented not only the speed, but ease of use is better when OpenGL is used. Its almost as if they want to prevent MacOS/Linux users from using the game when game makers use DirectX as the core to their 3D graphics processing.

Some people have tried using Adobe Flash and the Adobe AIR platform. For Flash its been okay, but the Adobe AIR API's require you to run things as root with no good reason myself or game developers I've spoken to recently can find. (wrote to them explain the problems with AIr and the readily agreed saying they would not use it for upcoming games) So for Linux, thanks to Adobe using extremely poor and dangerous judgement, AIR is not a viable options for multiple OS compatible games as far as Linux and MacOS are concerned (use the BSD security model, similar to Linux)

PS: You may want to check on the "Humble Bundle" if you want more games for Linux. high grade games that run on ALL platforms (mac/Linux/M$ Window$) and money goes to worthy charities.
Again, suggest you check the user base of RedHat, Ubuntu(big on ubuntu), Suse, and Madriva right now, especially in Europe, India and China. (Red Flag). (Japan likes Macs) Oh, South America as well. The US Market is not a great source for predicting world market direction these days. The USA is the last to use the most refined technologies but the first to use the crap. (aka MS...LOL). when I said the Ubuntu market share was rising with increased speed, I wasn't kidding. Windows Vista helped with that, and not in a small way either.

Oh no. NOT abadoned. Actually still being improved upon. Its just not mentioned as often as it should be. Been reading a few game developer magazines. Always dreamed of programming for a game shop. Intimidated a little by the graphics and AI parts of it though.

very true, as it has more applications then just games. but in the world of gaming its rarely used now. cant say why, DX and Open GL are about neck and neck now, open GL has the advantage of being open and multiplatform (read OS). but SX is starting to catch up to the point where its slightly better then open gl for games.

it use to be that DX was inferior in nearly all ways tho, but microsoft does have deep pockets so its not a huge surprise that its gaining ground.

but OPen GL has another advantage of being open and have multiple uses outside of game development.

I agree to a degree, although the large part of the Linux seem to gather around the following: Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS and Redhat. I recommend Suse/OpenSuse for people who want more MS like behavior. I have been looking at other distros as well, but many of them are working off of the Debian, RedHat or Gentoo models. the packaging system seems to be one of the key factors. My guess, Ubuntu will be the main stream OS for "users" and their actions with MP3 store sources in their OS seems to reflect they feel they are ready to capitalize on their following. So I think consolidation is happen (slow I grant). The "hundres" of distros are more for specialists in certain areas of study or languages: ScientificLinux, Gentoo, DammSmallLinux, Sabayon, Pinguy and so on. (Noobies will LOVE Pinguy, reported easier than Ubuntu...

So I'll say that the game DOES work with Wine, though with a few bugs:

1) GLSL shader translation needs to be disabled in the Wine registry (falls back to ARB path)
2) Performance is EXTREMELY low. My system should be able to handle basically stock High settings and instead I had to tune it to low with the effects and turned back on and textures not scaled down (so that you use the lower spec max texture sizes and LODs). Then I had to lower the resolution by quite a lot (have to run it at 1152x864, using a 4:3 monitor). I STILL get a good amount of lag.
3) Occasional lighting errors. Small areas will sometimes have a blocky black patch rather than a proper shadow. This is more rare but it's there.
4) Cinematic DoF doesn't draw correctly. Most systems can't handle this anyway so it's less important.


True if OGL was used this wouldn't be an issue. Anything using DX9 at this point has a high potential to run under Wine as long as it doesn't use GFWL or something silly like that (bought Batman Arkham Asylum and then found out I couldn't save... ouch). Only a few oddballs don't run for whatever reason (like Cryostasis). In this case using DX9 will probably make it easier to port to Xbox 360.

The Linux market will likely continue to grow, and OGL itself is feature rich and had most of the new DX features before they were part of the D3D spec. There are a handful of reasons devs will use DX though (porting to Xbox, financial incentives from MS/Publishers, etc). What might be nice though is if developers did what Google did with their various apps and tested them under Wine and submitted patches to fix Wine bugs that kept the app from working properly. Unfortunately not every company has the resources to do this.

A growing puddle is still small next to an ocean. Linux, even with strong boosts in userbase, is nowhere near a relevant gaming platform yet.

Many people made a similar statement about the rate of Global Warming..Enjoying the reduced winters and increased Rain, Tornados, floods yet (and possibly earthquakes triggered by increased water mass and currents)? There's more to come. Many reports are saying that global warming is progressing MUCH faster than anyone anticipated and those artic icecaps are fading fast.. BBC also indicated that above any other country in the world the USA is in certifiable levels of Global Warming denial.

Of course MS also said similar things about let's see....the Internet, Netscape, Mozilla, Linux, Apple, W3C standards and mobile phones. which leads to the next big gaming platform in which LInux is now HUGE...smart phones. (Android=LInux although I use Cyanogen as its rooted + no Google Apps)...The androids are invading... Smart phone gaming...impossible, absurd? Well, at 4-40Gb of storage capacity and a full PC level OS with Internet connectivity, probably more flexible gaming platform than, say a PSP or NintendoDS.

"First they laugh at you, then they ignore you, then they attack you....then....you win!" - Ghandi

Interestingly I looked up the current statistics from W3Schools (statistics are gathered by what the browser reports as the OS). According to them Linux on a PC platform is 5.1% of the userbase, and mobile is another .8% of users, 22% of which are Android users (another Linux platform). Should give you roughly 5.3% of the market.

Much larger than the 2% listed above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyLXniF5kqU&feature=related

try the wine!

Why so shocked? They may make more sales if they 'optimise' the game for Wine... but what would that cost them? How much longer would the development time have been? How many more Coders would they have needed to hire? How much more testing would they have needed to do? How much more hardware would they have needed to buy to test the game on?

The Developers decided to release the game for Microsoft Windows. Not XBox, not PS3, not Linux, not Mac... and, not Wine. They have no responsibility to ensure the game is optimised for the Wine environment, it's not a supported environment.

Plus to mention that Mac users can use Windows on their machines anyways, so there is even less reason to spend so much money on supporting such a small user base of gamers on Mac. Linux is even smaller the Mac users, less then half of the market share that Mac OS has.

The majority of developers, the additional sales do not justify the costs to supporting other OS's other then Windows.

Have to throw the monkey wrench in. but...linux IS on the desktop side. I've had my parents and sister (separate homes) using it for the last 4 years and they are technical no nothings. Running strong no support calls (yes!). My sister even uses MythTV to get all her favorite shows. Not one problem with viruses, spyware, crashes or functionality. Only complaint sister has is not being able to use Netflix streaming on the computer, which I'd say is an added bonus (requires client side DRM/spyware) Check out Ubuntu, OpenSUSE or Pingy OS. All designed for noobies and can literally work out of the box.

Windows doesn't generally work without any setup. A fresh install usually gives you a basic OS if you're lucky and none of your hardware will function properly until you install the appropriate drivers. Windows has the benefit of being pre-installed with the appropriate drivers and setup by OEMs. Additionally driver disks are provided.

Currently Linux can often work properly (except with certain hardware configurations) on a fresh install, and even have most of the hardware functioning correctly. In cases where it doesn't it takes about as much setup as it does in Windows (if you were doing a fresh install). An OEM Linux (such as with Dell) doesn't require any setup.

For every day tasks most Distros have things set up so users can jump in and figure out what's going on quickly and use it efficiently. Again, if you do more complicated things you might need to install additional applications or do additional setup but it's the same with Windows.