I thought that Linux support was already basically provided via Chrome native client exporting?
The part that was interesting to me.
"the estimated 10 percent of the game-hungry PC market" that runs Linux
This kind of runs contrary to the popular philosophy that gamers are very unlikely to be running Linux, mainly because the games support has historically always been very bad.
Of course there may be a mass of people who are running dual boots and are just waiting for a load of games to be released in order to delete their Windows partitions (people like me).
On the other hand, I run a dual boot and mainly use Linux as my desktop but since Windows is only a reboot away whether or not a game is available for Linux is not a massive part of my purchasing decision for the game. So it's possible it won't really affect their sales figures.
This surely also brings DirectX into question in terms of it's future as a platform. If I were to develop a game today I would almost certainly use OpenGL for portability reasons even if DirectX was a better library and it doesn't make a load of sense to make seperate DirectX and OpenGL versions.
Native Client only really gives support for browser-based games. This export option will let you ship standalone games for Linux, that run natively on the platform.
The part that was interesting to me. "the estimated 10 percent of the game-hungry PC market" that runs Linux
This kind of runs contrary to the popular philosophy that gamers are very unlikely to be running Linux, mainly because the games support has historically always been very bad.
Of course there may be a mass of people who are running dual boots and are just waiting for a load of games to be released in order to delete their Windows partitions (people like me).
On the other hand, I run a dual boot and mainly use Linux as my desktop but since Windows is only a reboot away whether or not a game is available for Linux is not a massive part of my purchasing decision for the game. So it's possible it won't really affect their sales figures.
This surely also brings DirectX into question in terms of it's future as a platform. If I were to develop a game today I would almost certainly use OpenGL for portability reasons even if DirectX was a better library and it doesn't make a load of sense to make seperate DirectX and OpenGL versions.