Linux Gaming

There are a plethora of free Linux games out there. Numerous FPS based on the Quake 3 engine along with numerous arcade style games and so on. As great as all these free games are the question still remains, can Linux be a profitable commercial gaming platform.

Windows has controlled the commercial games market for years. Even Mac OS is lacking in this area. There have been some commercial games released to Linux. ID Software is well known for bringing its title Doom 3 and Quake 4 to Linux along with Epic Games and there Unreal Tournament 2004.

In recent years there have been several startup companies that are handling porting games to Linux however most of these titles are older and lesser known. Linux Game Publishing is one of these companies. It was started back in 2001 and has ported Cold War, Shadogrounds, X2: The Threat and many more.

If you look hard enough you'll find plenty of diamonds in the ruff like the new Linux port OSMOS that will provide hours of entertainment to both the casual and hardcore gamer. S2 Games also has several games for Linux including there upcoming title "Champions of Newerth". I've played the beta for this and the game works very well under Linux.

As for big games, this fall Primal Rage will be released to Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. This games uses the Unigine engine which uses all the latest OpenGL technologies. When released, this game will be one of the best looking games on the market and it will run on Linux.

There is also news of Steam coming to Mac OS X and rumors of a Steam Linux release, this could begin to open doors. My guess is OSMOS could even become available on Mac OS X and Linux through Steam as it is rolled out to these new platforms. I'll provide updates on this as it occurs.

If Primal Rage does well in Linux along with the source engine games from Valve this could be a huge turn where Developers/Publishers will see there is a market for Mac and Linux. We'll just have to wait and see.

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