Wine looses a bit gaming and wins mobility?

[Evil Jay]

On 05/05/2010 07:07 PM, Ben Klein wrote:
> On 6 May 2010 10:01, Evil Jay <wine at eternaldusk.com> wrote:
>   
>> On 05/05/2010 02:34 PM, André Hentschel wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi Folks,
>>> Steam seems to add a Linux client in the near future, so maybe Wine will not be needed anymore for that. or did i get something wrong?
>>> That might reduce our "market share" a bit as i guess that many Wineusers play steam games.
>>> On the other hand Intel presented its Z600, which is basically x86 but without IDE, SATA or a BIOS. Thats the reason that it cant run Windows.
>>> So Linux runs and so should Wine i guess. So we might see some mobil advantures in the near future?
>>>
>>>       
>> I would not hold my breath waiting for that Steam client, there's still
>> been no official announcement and it could just as well be something
>> they just play around with as a side project for the next half decade.
>>
>> Phoronix has been claiming Steam for Linux was imminent for 2 years...
>> but for how many years did they (and even the developers) say that UT3
>> was right around the corner?  A few 32-bit god-awfully incomplete
>> binaries that can't even launch the actual GUI is not near enough to
>> start me waiting in a virtual line.
>>
>> To take the Devil's advocacy a step farther:  For all we know, Steam for
>> Linux is not even being actively developed;  They may have started it
>> with the Mac port and abandoned it as too resource intensive for the
>> expected payoff.  The few updates that we've seen (before the Linux
>> build was pulled) may well be the result of of the automated package
>> builder recompiling the Linux files due to changes in some shared
>> upstream code (being changed for the benefit of the Mac or Windows client).
>>
>> Now, personally I am hoping like crazy that Steam for Linux does
>> materialize in the next year or two.  But, if it does, it will hardly
>> put a dent in Wine's use for gaming.  Steam's not a game, so naturally
>> we must assume that Valve will port the Source engine too, so that they
>> will have some games to sell.  That's great, but how many games in the
>> AppDB are using the Source engine?  How many games sold through Steam
>> even use it, and will the non-Valve developers take the time to build
>> Linux packages?  Wine has plenty of gaming left in its future.
>>     
> The other solution is they pull a Picasa/Google Earth manoeuvre and
> bundle Wine with Steam (or rely on Wine to play the games).
>   

They didn't want that hassle with the Mac ports (they're native), so why
would they do it for Linux?

-J