On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, David Krider wrote: >I don't see this as being so exaggerated. The trick is the price-point. >At $300, the average person who wants to game is going to buy a console. >That's a lost sale. However, whatever about the person who has a nice >computer already sitting on his desk, and his *kid* comes along, and >wants to play games on it?... See, it's really hard to buy a crappy >computer from the likes of Dell or Gateway these days. Most of them will >play a lot of computer games really well.
Yes, but generally speaking, a company produces a product that is made specifically for target markets which are paying money for those products. The features and efforts put into those products are those that the target market of customers are paying for. If people are not paying for things that make gaming a reality in Linux, then gaming simply wont be a reality in Linux. Wether or not the kid comes along and would like to play a game, the reality is, if there is no money to be made by developing the things that gaming requires, then nobody is going to do it. >Here's a chance for a vendor to package up a distro for $50 - $100 that >already has all the games *configured*. Then, a simple button pick could >launch a "purchase this game now" thing to allow them to feed it a >credit card number, load it off one of the 30 distro disks, and start >playing. The config could already be done. Sure, there would be a >limited set of hardware that was supported. But the trick on PC's is the >configuration. Even if you're running Windows, it can be difficult to >get all the drivers aligned and working right. (And *then* you can have >the stupid box just STOP WORKING like my Win2K did with Half-Life just >last week! One day, I can play; the next, it dumps every time I try.) Do you really think that is a feasible business model? I don't. >Shoot, look at Microsoft with their media center PC OS. This is exactly >analogous. Setting up a PC to play any and all types of media files is a No, it isn't analogous. Microsoft OWNS the desktop. >Maybe I should try it. Maybe I should wrap up RedHat Linux, call it >"Pink Tutu," and create a configuration for every game that will run on >Linux for it. Then I'll need to setup a backend web site where I can >clear the game purchases, and go into a sales relationship with the >vendors to get preferental pricing. Then I need a download site with >enormous bandwidth (for iso's and updates), and advertising, and boxed >copies for those famous Wal-Mart shelves. And support. No, wait. I won't >need support because I won't allow people to run as root, and nothing >will ever break on its own. Yeah, that's the ticket! (I'm just >*kidding*, aiight?) By all means, if you think that you can create a business out of this idea, you're certainly encouraged to do so. I don't personally think it would be a profitable business venture myself in 2003, but you can certainly try to do so. In order for your idea above to be successful, people will have to pay you money. Are there people out there who would be willing to pay X amount of dollars to you for an OS product that allows them to purchase and/or download one of the currently available game titles and play it? You'd have to provide video driver support probably also, etc. so that the games work well. I don't see video game market being something really profitable in Linux for at least 1.5+ years personally, and I don't think people will start purchasing Linux OSs in order to play video games. Of course when I say that, I don't mean "nobody", but rather I mean "sufficient market forces to be profitable". Gaming in Linux exists now. It is for the most part, Linux hobbiests, enthusiasts, techies, etc. (myself included) whom are generating the initial interest. Many game companies are taking notice, and some titles are indeed coming to Linux. This will increase as time goes on, but it is still in its infancy, and there are several things that need to happen before it is truely viable on a "large" scale. For one, lots of home computers will have to be running Linux on the *home* desktop. That means Linux on the home desktop has to be widescale viable from a profitable business model perspective of OSS OS vendors. Remember - Microsoft OWNS the desktop. They'll continue to do so for a while I believe for various reasons. But that will change in the end. ;o) Linux will take over the world someday, as Linus set out to do, but it'll take a while yet. ;o) In short: The best thing that people wanting video games for Linux can do, is when you purchase a computer, tell the computer store or sales person that you are purchasing it specifically for playing video games in Linux because it rocks. Ask them about video game titles for Linux. Do this in every store. The more people that do that, feeds the food chain. That info goes back to suppliers, and ends up back to hardware companies and video game companies. When you purchase a video card, tell the supplier you are purchasing it for video games in Linux. Hell, when you purchase *anything*, tell the store you're using it for Linux. Even if you're lying! ;o) Tell them everything you're purchasing is for Linux. The more they hear this, the more push there is through the chain of command back to IHVs, and the more support for Linux will materialize. Just some suggestions. ;o) -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat -- Phoebe-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/phoebe-list
