Future: Linux Gaming

May 2008
"Linux will take the gaming industry by storm."
- Jesse Phillips

I have a crystal ball and I wish to tell of what I see. I see now gaming, gaming on Linux. People are running lots of games and it seem they're all being released for Linux as well as windows, but people aren't using Windows to play their games. But why, they don't even have a console in their home anymore. What has change? Why is Linux the new gaming platform?

There is the obvious Linux is stable, but that's not the reason. Linux has changed since companies started making games for it.

What I see is a dedicated gaming OS based off Linux, you turn on the computer and stick the game into the drive and the game is installed and run without touching anything, some games run directly off the disc. Saved games are transferable to flash drives. In fact some people are playing games with their friends with 4 keyboards and 4 mice plugged in, some of those are being run with 4 monitors/TVs.

Okay, so it looks like Linux hasn't added anything for the gamers to really enjoy right? right? Wrong. I see gamers in libraries, I see them on school computers. I see them on computers they can't install software too. Remember those games that could run from a disc? They also contain a live Linux distribution of the Gaming OS. As long as you have access to a DVD drive and can reboot to boot from the disc your game will load up and run.

On the positive side for Linux, this shift in the gaming industry has caused a mass of improvements. Not only are game companies spending money to develop games on this platform, but also on improvements to Linux. Hardware companies now see the great need to support Linux completely with everything they do.