CodeWeavers Launches CrossOver Games 9.0 for Linux and Mac

SAINT PAUL, Minn. (May 12, 2010) – Despite the massive distraction of this weekend's theatrical release of Iron Man 2, CodeWeavers, Inc., a leading developer of software products that turn Mac OS X and Linux into Windows-compatible operating systems, today announces it has completed the development of CrossOver Games 9.0 for both Mac and Linux.
CrossOver Games allows Windows games to be used on Mac and Linux PCs without the need for a Windows operating system license.
Available beginning today for download at www.codeweavers.com, CrossOver Games 9.0:

• supports the new Steam UI; and,
• StarCraft 2 (beta) and StarTrek Online; and
• enables users to install games from a single screen and a single click on CodeWeavers' compatibility center.

Historically, CodeWeavers programmers complete a software upgrade with a straight 96-hour burn fueled by Red Bull, Twizzlers and vending machine pretzels. The release of CrossOver Games 9.0 marks the first time CodeWeavers launched a new version of its software amidst the release of a blockbuster summer film, which typically grinds production to a halt as CodeWeavers programmers camp outside the theater for three days to secure the best seats on opening night.
"It's corporate policy that we schedule our software releases during weak spots in the movie calendar. Early Fall. Late Winter. Like, when a Meryl Streep film comes out," said Jeremy White, CodeWeavers chief executive officer. "What can I say? I screwed up. I got confused. I forgot about Iron Man 2.
"Hence the anomaly for this week's release of CrossOver Games 9.0, which also enables gamers to download installation 'recipes' directly from the CodeWeavers online Compatibility Database, located at C4.codeweavers.com," White added. "If another CrossOver Games user figures out how to use CrossOver to install a Windows-compatible game, he can upload this installation recipe to our database. For gamers using windows, that means they can switch to Mac or Linux without much worry.
"Our programmers were enraged at the scheduling conflict, though many snuck out late Friday afternoon to catch – spoiler alert here – Iron Man take down Whiplash," White said.
To ensure programmers continued working Saturday and Sunday without break, White created a makeshift "electric whip" to emulate Mickey Rourke's character's weapon of choice.
"Essentially, it was 48 strands of 28-inch stripped coax cables sewn into the fingers of an Ace Hardware work glove," White said. "I walked around cubes in our office screaming 'full Steam ahead, minions!' in a mediocre Russian accent while swinging the whip. It worked, more or less."
"At around 9 a.m. Sunday morning while quietly writing code at my desk, White's whip snagged me just below the groin on my left leg," said Jon Parshall, chief operating officer at CodeWeavers.
"Ugh. Fourteen stitches plus the pitiful sight of a grown man writhing on the floor in his own pool of blood," White said. "Hopefully sales of CrossOver Games 9.0 will help pay his medical bills."
CrossOver Games 9.0 is download-only and can be purchased for $39.95 at www.codeweavers.com.
About CodeWeavers
Founded in 1996 as a general software consultancy, CodeWeavers focuses on the development of Wine – the core technology found in all of its CrossOver products. The company's goal is to bring expanded market opportunities for Windows software developers by making it easier, faster and more painless to port Windows software to Linux. CodeWeavers is recognized as a leader in open-source Windows porting technology, and maintains development offices in Minnesota, the United Kingdom and elsewhere around the world. The company is privately held. For more information about CodeWeavers, log on to www.codeweavers.com.

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Bordeaux 2.0.4 for Linux Released

The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 2.0.4 for Linux today. Bordeaux 2.0.4 is a maintenance release that fixes a number of small bugs. With this release we have changed the Bordeux UI from a GTKDialog to a GTKWindow, the "OK" button has also been re-named to "Install". We have upgraded our Wine bundle from 1.1.36 to 1.1.41, updated to the latest winetricks release, added support for the new Steam UI, and changed the progress bar back to Zenity.
The Bordeaux UI changes come from our working agreement with StormOS.
With version 2.0.0 and onward we bundle our own Wine build and many tools and libraries that Wine depends upon. With this release we bundle Wine 1.1.41, Cabextract, Mozilla Gecko, Unzip, Wget and other support libraries and tools.
The cost of Bordeaux 2.0.4 is $20.00. Anyone who has purchased Bordeaux in the past six months is entitled to a free upgrade. Bordeaux comes with six months of upgrades and support and of course a 30-day money back guarantee.
Supported Applications/Games:

• Microsoft Office 2007
• Microsoft Office 2003
• Microsoft Office 2000
• Microsoft Office 97
• Microsoft Office Visio 2003
• Microsoft Office Project 2003
• Adobe Photoshop 6
• Adobe Image Ready 3
• Adobe Photoshop 7
• Adobe Image Ready 7
• Adobe Photoshop CS
• Adobe Photoshop CS2
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
• Steam and Steam based Games
• Apple QuickTime 6.5.2 Player
• IrfaView 4.25 (Image files only)
• Winetricks support

About Bordeaux:
The Bordeaux Technology Group is a software services and development company specializing in Windows compatibility software. Users of Linux, BSD, OpenSolaris and Mac systems from time to time find themselves in the need to run specialized Windows software. The Bordeaux suite enables access to these programs and data in a seamless and low cost manner without requiring licensing of Microsoft Technology. The Bordeaux Group also provides migration services and support for alternative operating systems specializing in Windows compatibility.
There is a multitude of software developed only for the Windows operating system and even when software vendors port their applications to another platform, generally it lacks features that the Windows version contains. The only solution these developers face is to have access to both systems for testing which leads to increased infrastructure demands, and wasted project resources. If you are vendor interested in supporting your application on Linux, BSD, Solaris or Mac OS X or a software user that needs to run a Windows application on Linux, BSD, OpenSolaris or Mac OS X we can help.
Version 2.0.4 New Features:

• Bundle Wine 1.1.41
• Support the new Steam UI
• Many small fixes to the UI
• Fixes to wine menu builder
• The Bordeux UI is now a GTKWindow
• Progress Bar now uses Zenity
• Updated to the latest Winetricks

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Crossover Games

I own an Imac so that means my gaming choices are limited. Since Apple has switched to Intel chips, it is possible for most games to be ported via a wrapper program that mimics a Windows environment. Yes, of course if gaming is that important to a computer user they could use the Bootcamp program and then load in Windows. And I've thought about doing that, and I may still become a bootcamper. However right now, I don't want to drop upwards of $200 for the Windows system.

On Massively, a commentator mentioned that he/she played Lord of the Rings Online via a wrapper program called Crossover Games. That idea intrigued me so I looked into the software. The Crossover suite of programs are offered by CodeWeavers. These programs mimic Windows using a wrapper based on the open source Wine project.

Crossover games is the "official" version of the Wine opensource project. It is affordable at $39.95 (the fee supports the Wine opensource programmers) and the installation is simple. What isn't simple is getting the subsequent windows games to work properly. Since this option is rather arcane no matter how easy Codeweavers has made it, you will probably need to know a little something about programming to get anything working.

To use Crossover Games, the user must create a mini-windows shell called a bottle. You can pick which flavor of windows you want this bottle to mimic (vista, winxp, 98, 2000). A bottle must be created for each game you want to play. Then you can load the games into the bottle via disc or downloads. Theoretically, it should be easy.

However I could get nothing to work with it. The LOTR instructions were easy however the program doesn't recognize the official game install file. I tried to download the free to play Uru Online. The installation progress was successful. However the site registration is no longer available so I can't log in to the program. As a lark I also tried to install Blue Mars. However there was an error that had something to do with the install aware program. I was at wit's end and wondered if I could use the software for anything. Finally I managed to see the program in action with the game Wizard 101(review later). And I can say that Crossover works very well for what it is.

This solution is very ad hoc and is in no way a substitute for Mac Bootcamp. But if you can't afford to spring for the Windows software at the moment, this program will do for the time being. I recommend it.

 

 Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off  CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.

Why there is a Market for Linux Games

Linux users are starved for quality games - there is no doubting that. Bring up the topic of a Linux port on most gaming forums and you will typically see responses about the market share of the operating system, that Linux users are cheap (thus why they use a free operating system) or there are too many package formats to support (which really is a non-issue). I'm not even going to bother trying to argue the point of market share, we all know Windows is a large majority and Linux is the under dog - lets leave it at that.

Lets stop and think about something for a moment - nowhere near all of those Windows users are gamers. In fact with the world we live in that is so heavily populated with consoles I would be surprised if even half of the people using Windows are the type that go out and purchase the latest and greatest PC games (or even play casually). Linux users on the other hand are typically a more tech savvy bunch and tech savvy people more often than not tend to gravitate towards being gamers.

Alright - enough speculation and assumptions, lets look at some cold hard numbers. Two recent games that had successful Linux ports would be 2DBoy's World of Goo and Frictional Game's enumbra Series. 2DBoy reported that since they released their Linux port of the game 10% of their total game sales have been for the Linux platform. Frictional Games reports a similair statistic - in fact 12% of their sales for the Penumbra series up to this point are for the Linux operating system.

Still need more convincing? If you have not been made aware of it yet as of my posting this there are still two days left to participate in the Humble Indie Bundle experiment. The Humble Indie Bundle offers your five games (including World of Goo and the first of the Penumbra series) at what ever cost you can afford. All five of the games are fully cross-platform (Windows, OSX, Linux) and when you make your donation you are asked to mark which operating system you are purchasing the games for. Take a look at the following statistics up until this point from the donations they have received:


Judging by that pie chart Linux users appear to make up almost 25% of the donations and their average donation amount is almost double that of the average Windows user donation. This means that of the 571,048$ donated thus far 142,762$ is from Linux users. But remember Linux users are cheap and their is no money in Linux game market - right.

Games that already exist on only the Windows platform need ports as well. In fact there is so much demand for some of these games to run on Linux that Codeweavers has a business commercially supporting many of these titles on the Linux operating system (it's not perfect - but for now it works).

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