Bruha's Journal: Round and Round

So were sitting around discussing various Linux stuff the other day at work and the subject of gaming comes up. Were all sitting here asking why are games not ported to Linux but are ported to OS X. Considering the similar structure of the OS's you'd think it would happen but it's not.

OS X is ahead of Linux desktop installs only slightly and with the new deals coming out in the next few months Linux will finally catch up with Mac desktop use. So when are our favorite games going to start popping up? In my case it could be awhile since I'm the common MMORPG player and my current addiction is Star Wars Galaxies. However Transgaming fills that gap nicely and I hope to play on Linux soon.

But what about everything else? And why?

MicroSoft is one of the biggest answers. DirectX was a good idea when it came out but now MicroSoft knows that if they dont port DirectX to Linux or the Mac then they can keep ahold of their market share of people who'd rather use Linux but dont becuase they're not willing to sacrifice the time and energy to dual boot or the money to have seperate systems. Furthermore since MS knows this they lobby most game developers to use their DirectX saying they'll have the best market access which unfortunately is true.

However many games today are Coded for PS2/Nintendo/X-BOX and none of those systems are using the same operating system. Unless there's some collusion nobody knows about those games are ported to each system many times. So why not Linux?