Why won't Blizzard make Starcraft 2 compatible with Ubuntu? [closed]
Will this chicken-VS-egg problem of not having new top games for linux ever get solved?
Will this chicken-VS-egg problem of not having new top games for linux ever get solved?
Probably. As Linux distributions continue to get better for more and more scenarios and increase their desktop share, companies will notice Linux and push out clients.
You have to understand, porting a game is not a cheap or simple process:
- Any libraries that are single-platform have to be swapped out (DirectX)
- Any non-portable code has to be swapped out
- (The biggest): Testing.
It basically means keeping devs working for a lot longer, hiring more testers to test on umpteen different distributions with umpteen different configurations on umpteen different hardware variants and then distributing and maintaining it.
It'll happen when these companies know they'll get a return on their investment and that's probably going to need one big company to take a risk on us and prove (or disprove) that we're a viable market for games.
At the moment, Valve looks like our best bet but even if they released Steam with all their Source Engine games today, it would be years before the likes of EA took serious notice.
In the meanwhile, Wine is getting pretty good at getting current AAA games working within a few months.
Two words: Market share.
Ubuntu's market share is at about 1%. Microsoft Windows is at about 92%. While Mac OS X is at about 5%.
It just wouldn't be worth their time to develop and support software (Starcraft 2) to run on Ubuntu or any other flavor of Linux.
Simply put, Ubuntu isn't popular enough.
Source for statistics: Ars Technica: Windows 7 growing faster than Vista, overtakes Mac OS X
It depends on what you mean by 'compatible'. If you mean a native version, it is unlikely that one will be created due to the market share arguments made by @sunpech.
You'd be better off asking how to run Starcraft 2 on Ubuntu. From the wine application database:
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=20882
it looks like it can be run quite well in wine. You should try running it in wine.