Comment by pjmlp

Comment by pjmlp 3 months ago

7 replies

If all one wants it to run games that use the Win32 API as defined today, surely.

If all one wants it to run games that use the Win32 API as defined tomrrow, anyone's guess.

int_19h 3 months ago

If the API only has additions, then Microsoft would still need to convince game devs to actually use them (and Valve will point out that if they do, their game will not work on Steam Deck, so there's a clear downside).

If some APIs are removed, it breaks older Windows games. I can't think of any historical API that has been completely removed in this way - even stuff like DirectDraw and DirectPlay is still there even though it has been deprecated for decades.

  • pjmlp 3 months ago

    See ABK deal, Microsoft has tolerated SteamDeck thus far, they own the platform.

    • wqaatwt 3 months ago

      What about it? I’m just curious what specifically do you think MS could do that wouldn’t get them into extreme trouble with the EU/FTC?

      • robertlagrant 3 months ago

        They could create a new interface that's somehow more efficient, and work with Unreal / Unity / Godot and a few others so it's just a recompile for them, but it's a bigger problem for Wine, perhaps? I'm just thinking out loud.

        • wqaatwt 3 months ago

          They “could” also create a new interface that's somehow more efficient for Windows. Oh wait..

          I don’t think MS has the attention span for stuff like that. Especially considering the limited short to medium term payoff.

          They could buy Unity though. Considering how mismanaged that company is it wouldn’t be such a bad outcome. Of course large acquisitions are very costly and risky these days.

baq 3 months ago

Note this is a huge improvement from 'binary is guaranteed to not work in the future, probably not too distant' of the standard model of Linux distributions.

wqaatwt 3 months ago

If Linux gaming picks up and it gains significant market share then that is not an issue. Game developers will not use APIs that don’t work on the machines of ~20% of their users (or won’t make it mandatory, anyway)

Considering the alternative (ie. the native approach) would result in having very few games on Linux anyway that doesn’t seem that bad.