Curse

dama · Aug 07, 2007, 06:36 AM // 06:36

I understand development of a LINUX client would not be cost effective & a MAC client is a maybe. How cost effective would it be to make sure some of the WINDOWS emulators available would be compatible with Guild Wars 2?

The advantage gained, especially for Linux users, would be a wider market. Linux does not need constant hardware upgrades to maintain performance. People with older computers would have less problems running a demanding program like a high end game. Those people would be more likely to buy more games software if if they did not have to buy hardware upgrades so often.

Lonesamurai · Aug 07, 2007, 09:56 AM // 09:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by dama

I understand development of a LINUX client would not be cost effective & a MAC client is a maybe. How cost effective would it be to make sure some of the WINDOWS emulators available would be compatible with Guild Wars 2?

The advantage gained, especially for Linux users, would be a wider market. Linux does not need constant hardware upgrades to maintain performance. People with older computers would have less problems running a demanding program like a high end game. Those people would be more likely to buy more games software if if they did not have to buy hardware upgrades so often.

It also won't be necessary after a deal was struck between Novell and Microsoft last month enabling future distro's to use the Windows AutoUpdate and Direct X architecture and enabling nearly full support for windows games on the Linux distro's produced by Novell (and the Linspire guys, forgot the name)

and this deal cost 23billion $'s... and here was me thinking that Linux didn't cost anything?!?

heh, <3 my vista anyway, so i don't care

Dex · Aug 07, 2007, 11:05 PM // 23:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by dama

I understand development of a LINUX client would not be cost effective & a MAC client is a maybe. How cost effective would it be to make sure some of the WINDOWS emulators available would be compatible with Guild Wars 2?

The advantage gained, especially for Linux users, would be a wider market. Linux does not need constant hardware upgrades to maintain performance. People with older computers would have less problems running a demanding program like a high end game. Those people would be more likely to buy more games software if if they did not have to buy hardware upgrades so often.

Yes, Linux implementations do tend to be more resource efficient than even a well-maintained Windows install, but not enough to make an enormous difference when it comes to gaming. Windows doesn't need "constant hardware upgrades to maintain performance" either, just a little system maintenance. On top of that, most systems are still GPU limited in most games, so better resource management won't make more than a small difference in most cases. This difference gets even smaller as games become more complex. A P3 with a FX5900 isn't going to run Oblivion at an acceptable level...I don't care what OS you're using. You're going to need more powerful hardware even if you're using Linux (assuming you can even get really good Linux drivers for your hardware...

).

As far as a wider market...I still really don't think that's significant enough to devote dev resources to it. Windows Vista, which is considered a total failure as far as sales compared to past Windows releases, surpassed the MacOS's ENTIRE WORLDWIDE INSTALLED BASE in the first 5 weeks after its release. MacOS has 3x the installed base of Linux. Even if you could convince a handful of people to install/dual-boot Linux to squeeze more performance out of their old hardware it wouldn't make enough of a difference in sales for ANet to see a significant change to their bottom-line.

Don't get me wrong, I like Linux. I use it to host services all the time. I just wouldn't bother porting games to it if I ran a game dev shop.

Just my 2 cents...

akatookey · Aug 08, 2007, 08:24 PM // 20:24

linux and mac makes up a total of about 4% of the computers world-wide, in south korea im pretty sure that only windows computers are compatible with anything.....out of that 4%, the few people who would play gw2 (compared to the whole gw2 community) could learn how to dual boot...not worth it for a. net

even if 1million american users wanted to play guild wars on a mac...a.net will just say to dual boot because that takes man power out of things they could be doing to support the rest of the large gw community (consider europe, and asia where macs are a lot less supported and a lot less popular)