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Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

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Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#71

Post by jillesvangurp »

modeless wrote: post #22

It seems pretty clear to me that this is for Valve's long-awaited standalone VR headset, Deckard. What other reason would they have to support Gorilla Tag on ARM? https://x.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1837210246076588500 Compatibility with your existing Steam library out of the box will be a huge competitive advantage for Deckard over Meta Quest.

I don't think this is about the hardware necessarily. They probably make more money from the Steam store and there are some notable ARM based platforms where you currently can't use Steam and where they are not able to sell games.

Macs would be a big juicy target, for example. If they can get emulation working well enough with proton on that, that's a huge market. Lots of people with disposable income on there that could be buying lots of games. And Apple is doing similar things as well so there might be some opportunity to tap into what they are doing.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#72

Post by johnny22 »

chithanh wrote: post #62
zamadatix wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even calling Intel x86 a loss overnight AMD is doing more than fine enough, server and consumer, for x86 to stay with a competitive presence into the 2030s even taking a dim view of the architectures future.

After buying Intel, Qualcomm could sink x86 by simply not renewing the cross-licensing agreement with AMD. With Intel's patents on emulating x86 on other CPU architectures, Qualcomm could then ensure that going forward, the only economically viable way of running x86 code is on Snapdragon CPUs. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel...

I gotta feeling that would raise legal issues at time of sale. I don't see that happening.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#73

Post by modeless »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #71
modeless wrote: post #22

It seems pretty clear to me that this is for Valve's long-awaited standalone VR headset, Deckard. What other reason would they have to support Gorilla Tag on ARM? https://x.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1837210246076588500 Compatibility with your existing Steam library out of the box will be a huge competitive advantage for Deckard over Meta Quest.

I don't think this is about the hardware necessarily. They probably make more money from the Steam store and there are some notable ARM based platforms where you currently can't use Steam and where they are not able to sell games. Macs would be a big juicy target, for example. If they can get emulation working well enough with proton on that, that's a huge market. Lots of people with disposable income on there that c…

As much as it sounds like it would make sense, I haven't seen any hints that they are developing Proton for macOS. That seems like it would be evident from open source changes, if it was happening.

I think Valve is reluctant to get any closer to Apple, or any large platform owner for that matter. They want to stay independent and own their own destiny. They even tried to get away from Microsoft with Steam Machines. It failed back then, but the Steam Deck is the continuation of that effort.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#75

Post by dwaite »

shmerl wrote: post #7
whateveracct wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me neither, but it's a shame. Those Apple Silicon chips are solid for gaming.

If Apple cared about gamers, they wouldn't have blocked proper Vulkan support. They simply don't care. A major reason to stay away from Apple if you are a gamer.

How did they block Vulkan support?

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#76

Post by dwaite »

hot_gril wrote: post #20
caseyy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the end of the world to develop for macOS and iOS. These platforms are just idiosyncratic and don’t have many serious gamers. Neither smartphones nor Macs have been powerful or ergonomic enough to play current-generation games for decades. So the user base is almost entirely people who don’t play games. For a developer, the juice is not worth the squeeze (and by far!). The platforms are challenging to port f…

I feel like Apple has the opposite attitude of Microsoft's towards 3p apps in general, not just games. Mac updates will constantly break apps at least minor ways, sometimes major (like 32-bit removal).

Microsoft's reluctance to break things comes from commercial entities being a big source of licenses both for desktops and backend servers. If some poorly maintained mission-critical app doesn't run on Windows 11 because it hasn't had a recompile in a decade, that means a Global 2000 company isn't able to update their workforce.

Apple considers it a partnership with developers, even if that partnership in reality is rather one-sided. If you stop maintaining your software you aren't holding up your end of the partnership. For instance, ignoring six years worth of deprecation warnings about 32 bit software going away, or seven years (and running) warnings about OpenGL support, or still shipping only Intel binaries four years after M1 launched.

But this is not how games are supported, except for subscription games like MMOs or crazy edge case labors-of-love like Starcraft. Fixes are going to be driven by a chance at new revenue, like updating to support HiDPI displays properly as part of a major DLC update. Afterthought ports (especially third party ones) like a Windows title to the Mac are even more limited in terms of ongoing support - and are often like-for-like limits to 32 bit intel only because the original developers never tried to write portable code.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#77

Post by sangnoir »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #71
modeless wrote: post #22

It seems pretty clear to me that this is for Valve's long-awaited standalone VR headset, Deckard. What other reason would they have to support Gorilla Tag on ARM? https://x.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1837210246076588500 Compatibility with your existing Steam library out of the box will be a huge competitive advantage for Deckard over Meta Quest.

I don't think this is about the hardware necessarily. They probably make more money from the Steam store and there are some notable ARM based platforms where you currently can't use Steam and where they are not able to sell games. Macs would be a big juicy target, for example. If they can get emulation working well enough with proton on that, that's a huge market. Lots of people with disposable income on there that c…

iPhones and iPads too. Valve opening a Steam store on iOS devices is the stuff of Apple's nightmares.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#78

Post by saagarjha »

chithanh wrote: post #65
modeless wrote: post #22

It seems pretty clear to me that this is for Valve's long-awaited standalone VR headset, Deckard. What other reason would they have to support Gorilla Tag on ARM? https://x.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1837210246076588500 Compatibility with your existing Steam library out of the box will be a huge competitive advantage for Deckard over Meta Quest.

It seems pretty clear to me that the main target of this is ARM Chromebooks, at least for now. As these are the only products currently shipping in any relevant numbers where this makes sense.

Mobile?

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#79

Post by corsix »

whazor wrote: post #66
Rohansi wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not possible to fully AOT for all applications because you don't know which ones do JIT compilation to generate x86 code at runtime. Many games make use of LuaJIT, for example.

LuaJIT would also work with ARM though, so would it be possible to swap it out?

Indeed, LuaJIT support for Windows/Arm64 was added in https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/issues/593, and there’s experimental out-of-tree support for Windows/Arm64EC in https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/issues/1096

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#80

Post by Cloudef »

pjmlp wrote: post #41
missblit wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam has supported native Linux games for a decade.

It has, yet the focus is all about Proton.

It's unfortunate but win32 has stable ABI. Such thing can't be really said about glibc and dynamic linking. Many old linux game binaries simply don't work or need tinkering to get them work.
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