Hope someone in the game industry sees this and realises that linux gamers are a viable demographic. Not many companies apart from id have released AAA linux titles offlate. Initial efforts to create linux gaming companies (like Loki games) shut down and I am afraid the wrong lessons were learned - that linux gamers wont pay for games. Hope this post changes some of that, at least for indie developers.
I don't know, what I see is that you can make over twice as much on a Windows platform. Even if the users won't pay as much, there are still so many that it more than makes up for it. Distribution costs are low if you distribute online so the total revenue is the main factor (as opposed to per unit price). I imagine the development costs to port a title to Linux are fairly substantial as well, not to mention the additional support costs.
Besides, I doubt Linux users would be happy about paying $100+ for a game if translated to normal game prices ($50-$60 or so).
What I see is you ignoring a significant chunk of the market, and entering a market with more competition, and more fierce competition to boot, from bigger dev houses. If anything it makes more sense to go for Mac + Linux instead of Windows (for indie devs anyway), and in that case since you've written things in a cross-platform manner you can ship for Windows anyway and win even bigger.
> I imagine the development costs to port a title to Linux are fairly substantial as well
If you target OpenGL instead of a proprietary MS platform then there is no porting (or little porting). Existing games don't have the luxury of choice, but new ones do.
(I have ignored things like differing sound APIs, but not a huge upfront cost if you simply intend to be cross-platform from day #1)
> Besides, I doubt Linux users would be happy about paying $100+ for a game if translated to normal game prices ($50-$60 or so).
Well yeah, if you just jack up the price on the Linux game and leave the rest at $50-60 of course they won't be happy. The point is that people say Linux users won't pay for software, and that's clearly false.
I'd never pay a $50 premium for Linux support, but wouldn't mind a $5-$10 premium if it means I don't have to reboot every time I want to play.
Assuming a game is written using portable technologies (OpenGL, GLSL, cg, OpenAL, SDL), I doubt that porting it would be difficult. Obviously, a game which uses Direct3D, MFC, embeds IE, etc, will be a different matter.
Hopefully, Valve will release the rumored Steam for Linux and make massive profits. That would go a long way towards proving that Linux users will buy stuff.
Comments
Hope someone in the game industry sees this and realises that linux gamers are a viable demographic. Not many companies apart from id have released AAA linux titles offlate. Initial efforts to create linux gaming companies (like Loki games) shut down and I am afraid the wrong lessons were learned - that linux gamers wont pay for games. Hope this post changes some of that, at least for indie developers.
I don't know, what I see is that you can make over twice as much on a Windows platform. Even if the users won't pay as much, there are still so many that it more than makes up for it. Distribution costs are low if you distribute online so the total revenue is the main factor (as opposed to per unit price). I imagine the development costs to port a title to Linux are fairly substantial as well, not to mention the additional support costs.
Besides, I doubt Linux users would be happy about paying $100+ for a game if translated to normal game prices ($50-$60 or so).
What I see is you ignoring a significant chunk of the market, and entering a market with more competition, and more fierce competition to boot, from bigger dev houses. If anything it makes more sense to go for Mac + Linux instead of Windows (for indie devs anyway), and in that case since you've written things in a cross-platform manner you can ship for Windows anyway and win even bigger.
> I imagine the development costs to port a title to Linux are fairly substantial as well
If you target OpenGL instead of a proprietary MS platform then there is no porting (or little porting). Existing games don't have the luxury of choice, but new ones do.
(I have ignored things like differing sound APIs, but not a huge upfront cost if you simply intend to be cross-platform from day #1)
> Besides, I doubt Linux users would be happy about paying $100+ for a game if translated to normal game prices ($50-$60 or so).
Well yeah, if you just jack up the price on the Linux game and leave the rest at $50-60 of course they won't be happy. The point is that people say Linux users won't pay for software, and that's clearly false.
I'd never pay a $50 premium for Linux support, but wouldn't mind a $5-$10 premium if it means I don't have to reboot every time I want to play.
Assuming a game is written using portable technologies (OpenGL, GLSL, cg, OpenAL, SDL), I doubt that porting it would be difficult. Obviously, a game which uses Direct3D, MFC, embeds IE, etc, will be a different matter.
Hopefully, Valve will release the rumored Steam for Linux and make massive profits. That would go a long way towards proving that Linux users will buy stuff.
Aside from people not understanding anything about how steam works with the dedicated servers, I've never heard any rumors at all about that.
Though, I expect the mac port will make things work better on linux (in wine)