Half-life 3 will not be exclusive to Steam OS

uncle_rufus said:
Whilst I like Valve's ideals I can't help but wonder if it's really something that will take off with any other developers... How much are exclusivity deals worth to developers? (assuming the console manufacturers pay them for exclusivity - or am I being a dummy?) It's got to be a significant enough amount to make it worthwhile being exclusive - so for example you take Sony's PS3/4 exclusivity deal because you'll make enough out of it to more than offset the sales you've lost by not developing for the Xbox and PC... and save a little in development costs because you only have to make + optimise the code for one system...

If so then Valve are essentially asking these developers to take a chance on spending a bit more on developing for multiple platforms with no extra incentive and hope that their title is successful enough on all of them...
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Developers are already in that position, no one pays them to make PC exclusives. Don't forget that SteamOS is really just a linux distro with tweaks, and that SteamOS games are just PC games. PC != Windows.
 
Linkex said:
Developers are already in that position, no one pays them to make PC exclusives. Don't forget that SteamOS is really just a linux distro with tweaks, and that SteamOS games are just PC games. PC != Windows.
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True, I suppose there's effectively no such thing as a "PC Exclusive" in the monetary sense - just that there are a few developers who don't develop for the consoles...

But then it still comes down to what's in it for developers? I guess if they think that Valve's new machine is going to convert a vast amount of the current console user-base to what is effectively PC gaming? That's a chicken + egg scenario though where devs won't do it until they see evidence of that and console gamers won't buy one until they see evidence of the games they want being available on it
 
robgmun said:
If Alyx isn't in HL3 i won't be interested anyway
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uncle_rufus said:
True, I suppose there's effectively no such thing as a "PC Exclusive" in the monetary sense - just that there are a few developers who don't develop for the consoles...

But then it still comes down to what's in it for developers? I guess if they think that Valve's new machine is going to convert a vast amount of the current console user-base to what is effectively PC gaming? That's a chicken + egg scenario though where devs won't do it until they see evidence of that and console gamers won't buy one until they see evidence of the games they want being available on it
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I think the aim would be more to convert existing PC users to the SteamOS. Bare in mind that the steambox's will basically just be PCs - standard(ish) PC hardware running PC OS and PC software. Plus, I imagine that porting Linux to Windows is much simpler than the other way round, so I don't think it will be a case of Steambox OR PC. It'll be more like PC/steambox OR console. I think that we will just see existing PC devs shift to include Linux builds of thier games, rather than it being a dedicated endevor.

At least I hope so, otherwise what you say is most likely correct - they wouldn't have any incentive to do so.
 
Linkex said:
I think the aim would be more to convert existing PC users to the SteamOS. Bare in mind that the steambox's will basically just be PCs - standard(ish) PC hardware running PC OS and PC software. Plus, I imagine that porting Linux to Windows is much simpler than the other way round, so I don't think it will be a case of Steambox OR PC. It'll be more like PC/steambox OR console. I think that we will just see existing PC devs shift to include Linux builds of thier games, rather than it being a dedicated endevor.

At least I hope so, otherwise what you say is most likely correct - they wouldn't have any incentive to do so.
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Nothing will be ported (this doesn't really happen for games, game engines, yes, games no). Linux builds is what you're talking about.

I am very interested in Steam Boxes and SteamOS myself, though I can't see myself using them extensively, as my main PC I use for productivity too, and the other PC that's a HTPC is a secondary games computer too for LAN goodness, and as such probably needs to stay as a Windows computer for the foreseeable future, as I can't see many games getting linux builds particularly quickly after the release.
 
But converting PC users to SteamOS doesn't increase the number of what as you say are essentially PC/Linux users, and therefore it doesn't open up a bigger market for them to potentially sell games to to make it worthwhile...

I'm also impressed, no doubt about that, but I'm mostly interested in seeing how the streaming features work, as a HTPC running SteamOS or similar which can stream games from my master PC (which like you I use for plenty besides gaming) would be ideal :D
 
Oh I know, I don't think that's the purpose really. I think the idea is to shift importance away from D3D/Direct X above anything, and I think the games running on Linux is additional reason for it, that's the positive in this, OpenGL will run on Windows and any other platform, D3D doesn't.

This means that MS is no longer indirectly controlling the PC games industry to some degree, which they are neglecting due to their Xbox anyway.
 
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