EA Announces Support For Ubuntu At Ubuntu Developer Summit - Polidicks

[quote=omgubuntu.co.uk]Richard Hilleman of Electronic Arts delivered a short address to the attendees of the Ubuntu Developer Summit this evening, a day after the company released its first two games on the Ubuntu platform. Highlighting the emergence of new platforms – ‘At least one a week. Sometimes one a day’ - and the changing audiences and business models associated with them. Hilleman expressed enthusiasm towards the ‘fastest growing platforms’ – mobile, social and web. ‘The biggest thing that’s changed is where our customers play games, who they are, and how they pay for it.’ he said. ‘[In the past] we had a core demographic who played our games: around 50 million of them, and they were disproportionately men. ‘That’s no longer true,’ he continued. ’The fastest growing segmemnts are mobile, social and web – and all three of those formats are dominated by women.’ And this has changed how EA make money. “The fastest growing payment models, in the fastest growing platform, are in the ‘freemium/free-to-play models’. ‘We have always been a platform agnostic company, willing to support platforms that have a viable business model.” he concluded. One inferred a passing nod to Ubuntu as he said this. Walled Gardens & Native Games Using the analogy of ‘walled gardens’, Hilleman compared the ‘open nature’ of projects like Ubuntu and Google as being the ‘white spaces’ between the walls of other products. And these, he believes, are fast becoming what’s more important, helping the company to ‘sew together’ its customers experiences regardless of what, when or when they play. ‘Generally the open systems, the part that unify the rest of the world, are the parts that actually matter. You can only keep the world out for so long.’ During a Q&A with Hilleman, he revealed some interesting information: - > EA have built 14 different products for WINE but are moving away from it > They are seeking to create a set of ‘configuration sets’ with Canonical on hardware they will support > They are most excited about HTML5 and WebGL – which boasts the widest reach > Hilleman expects China to pick an OS ‘not made by Microsoft’ > The company will ‘showing off’ a browser-based game with Playstation 2 grade graphics at Google I/O > They will be judging the ‘success’ of the Ubuntu titles on user rather than ‘financial’ metrics[/quote] [url=http://omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/05/ea-delivers-talk-at-ubuntu-developer-summit/][source][/url] With these guys and [url=http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_linux_dampfnudeln&num=1]Valve[/url] both backing Linux, good can only come. Well, at least assuming that EA means something other than the two browser-based game launchers they have on the Ubuntu Software Center already.

If Valve backing Linux is a push in the right direction, EA backing Linux is like getting your Ass-Kickers 3000 out and using them.

I hope one of those configuration sets includes BF2, BF2 on linux would kick ass.

Well naturally, EA support Android which is quite similar to work with.

They actually just pushed a few shitty HTML5 games to the Ubuntu software center. They literally wrote a program which adds a web browser bookmark to their shit. This isn't the kind of support Linux needs, stop treating its userbase like the average facebooktard.

Well, its a start. Get all my games on linux and I won't need windows anymore.

Serious support for Linux? I call bullshit. I mean, seriously, this is the [I]original [/I]Evil Gaming Company we're talking about here.

Any step into this direction is a good one. Games should be multi OS like in the old days. All on one disk.

Interesting move, I wonder what caused it. That Valve made a move? Their "shittiest company in America" reward? Something completely different?

we create web game for linux look we support linux!!!

[QUOTE=inconspicious;35899625]They actually just pushed a few shitty HTML5 games to the Ubuntu software center. They literally wrote a program which adds a web browser bookmark to their shit. This isn't the kind of support Linux needs, stop treating its userbase like the average facebooktard.[/QUOTE] Calm your tits. It's a start. If they truly do plan to show up at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, then they must be planning more than a few HTML5 games (which is a good thing anyway, it gets rid of Flash quicker). It takes time for a developer of any size to migrate to other platforms because there is a fair deal of research and testing required, and because the technologies are wildly varying. No matter how "evil" you think EA are, they are one of the only developers who has come forward and said "yeah, we kinda want to support Linux more". Announcing it just after we found out Valve have a working port of L4D2 is kinda odd, but it makes sense if they were planning on announcing it later, they now have competition for that market. [editline]10th May 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;35900037]Interesting move, I wonder what caused it. That Valve made a move? Their "shittiest company in America" reward? Something completely different?[/QUOTE] The fact it's a possible market and can make money perhaps? Have you seen how much more the Linux users give on indie bundles? It's proof in a way that they do want to have games on Linux, and will support developers who support it. But how that will roll over to a massive publisher I don't know.

Hopefully, at some point in time, all future PC games will have Linux ports, so the WINE devs can just focus on making preexisting games work better. Because WINE is not a solution for playing Windows games on Linux. I love how so many proponents of WINE use TF2 as an example when TF2 is the highest priority game to the WINE devs, it'd be pathetic if it didn't work 100% bug free no effort.

Its obvious Microsoft couldn't give two shits about windows as a gaming platform, its only logical to go to Linux and be supported properly.

EA might not be great. But this could cause other developers to push towards supporting linux.

It's bad because EA!

rip ubuntu