Author: JT Smith
Competitor Scott Draeker isn’t impressed with TransGaming Technologies’ plan to use its version of Wine to get Windows games to work on Linux.
On Monday, TransGaming and MandrakeSoft announced the WineX project, which would allow games designed for Windows systems to run on Linux machines. When asked about the traditional Linux gaming model, in which companies such as Draeker’s Loki Entertainment port games to Linux, TransGaming president and COO Vikas Gupta predicted the WineX model will blow them away. “This obviously gives us a huge competitive advantage since our approach renders the traditional approach obsolete,” Gupta said.
Not so fast, says Draeker, whose Loki Entertainment has been the flagship company of that “traditional” approach. Draeker has doubts about games running on Wine working as well as games actually made to run on Linux.
Although Loki filed for bankruptcy back in August, the company has continued to release games, including Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns in late August and Postal Plus “coming soon.”
Draeker’s response to Gupta’s quote on how TranGaming is making the traditional approach obsolete: “Sure it does, in exactly the same way that deleting Linux and running Windows makes porting games to Linux obsolete.”
Draeker adds: “The reason people use Linux is not because it’s a great way to run
Windows software. If you want Windows software then you should be
running Windows. Our customers use Linux to run Linux software.
“When Loki ports a game we don’t use emulation or other tricks. We are
creating a native Linux application. That’s the only way to take
advantage of the features and stability that Linux offers. No Windows
software, no matter how well emulated, can do that … Linux users
demand more than Windows software can offer.”
Sounds like this isn’t the last comment about each other we’ll hear from Loki and TransGaming.
