John Carmack heeft een .plan update gepost met info over de Linux en Mac retail versies van Quake 3 Arena. De masters zullen tegelijkertijd in produktie gaan, maar omdat de Win32 versie het populairst is kan het problematisch worden om een Linux of Mac versie in de winkel op te pikken. Op een later tijdstip (na kerstmis) zal er de mogelijkheid geboden worden om online de extra Mac of Linux binaries neer te halen, maar om te kunnen meten hoe populair de Linux en Mac versies zijn zal dit niet meteen gebeuren:
Some advance warning about something that is sure to stir up some argument:We should be handing off the masters for all three platforms within a day or two of each other, but they aren't going to show up in stores at the same time. Publishers, distributers, and stores are willing to go out of their way to expedite the arrival of the pc version, but they just won't go to the same amount of trouble for mac and linux boxes.
THE EXECUTABLES FOR ALL PLATFORMS WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD UNTIL AFTER CHRISTMAS. This means that if you want to play on the mac or linux, don't pick up a copy of the pc version and expect to download the other executables.
Our first update to the game will be for all platforms, and will allow any version to be converted into any other, but we intend to hold that off for a little while.
We are doing this at the request of the distributors. The fear is that everyone will just grab a windows version, and the separate boxes will be ignored.
A lot of companies are going to be watching the sales figures for the mac and linux versions of Q3 to see if the platforms are actually worth supporting. If everyone bought a windows version and the other boxes sold like crap in comparison, that would be plenty of evidence for most executives to can any cross platform development.
I know there are a lot of people that play in both windows and linux, and this may be a bit of an inconvenience in the short term, but this is an ideal time to cast a vote as a consumer.
Its all the same to Id (I like hybrid CD's), and our continued support of linux and mac (OS X for the next title) is basically a foregone conclusion, but the results will probably influence other companies.
