Two open gaming platform efforts

Posted Jan 23, 2007 20:14 UTC (Tue) by bryanlarsen (guest, #26230)
Parent article: Two open gaming platform efforts

These look like two different beasts to me.

Gamix seems to have both the chicken and the egg, OGCC has neither.

In terms of "chickens", Gamix has 7 games currently available.

In terms of "eggs", Gamix has the start of a viable plan for seeding hardware. Many of today's PC's are compliant with the Gamix spec; they need to get Gamix stickers on to more of them! Heavy proselytization and setting a much cheaper early adopter certification price would go a long way. Hardware vendors, please look into Gamix.

They should also package a few of top free Linux games into gamix ISO's to give away as demos.

OTOH OGCC has neither chicken nor eggs, just a press release, a wiki and a forum.

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Two open gaming platform efforts

Posted Jan 23, 2007 20:40 UTC (Tue) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

Hmm, I'm not so sure that it is time to be counting those chickens. They are mostly open source games. The games mostly run on pre-existing windows and/or linux deployments. It would be hard to find a Gamix-compliant machine that did not already run windows or linux. Maybe the imac and/or mac pro might fit the bill?

This seems to be a PC-booter approach to PC-gaming. One of the major advantages of PC gaming is that you can use your system for other things in parallel, such as email or chat or whatever common applications get used in sync with gaming. I suppose VOIP applications are really the killer apps at the moment although I suspect they will become more folded into games over time. So call me a doubter on their whole concept, although I could easily turn out to be wrong.

But still, I wonder if they are licensing the right to ship Nvidia's drivers or if they are hoping Nvidia will turn a blind eye. And of course will anyone feel like filing a lawsuit over the GPL legal gray area each and every Gamix image will fall into.

Two open gaming platform efforts

Posted Jan 24, 2007 14:37 UTC (Wed) by wertigon (guest, #42963) [Link] (1 responses)

While there are many compliant Gamix machines, I don't think Gamix really could be considered a console - the specification is too loose. The main advantage to develop for a console is that you can play a game anywhere and it'll just work. None of this "Oh, I'm sorry sir, your system has X and Y which are known to have buggy drivers" crap that you see all too often on PC. Right now I see nothing in Gamix that will prevent that from happening to them, and I think they'll run into that wall quite soon.

OGCC on the other hand is trying to make this work by developing a specific console that can run the "Core OS" or a firmware. It's design is rigid and set in stone, so the "Play Anywhere" trait that all consoles share will be much easier to uphold. IMO that will be the key, but then again, I could be wrong. Only time will tell. :)

Two open gaming platform efforts

Posted Jan 24, 2007 16:37 UTC (Wed) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

By specifying the video hardware and shipping the driver, I'd say they have a fair crack at avoiding the "I'm sorry sir you have buggy drivers" problem.

They may fail at the "I'm sorry sir your videocard is too new for the disc you have" problem.