Linux Games Not Selling

Patrick McAllister was one of the folks who wrote to us about a report talking with John Carmack [?] regarding id's sales of Linux games. Apparently, it's been pretty absymal - enough to cover costs, but "they wouldn't make a bean-counter blink". I wonder what Loki's experience has been.

Comments

we supported it

[rotten_]

Well, when Q3A was going to be released, I let my friends that work for Electronics Boutique that I wanted the first copy. For some reason I couldn't just preorder it like you could with the Windows version.

So on the release day they got one (1) copy in, and my friend snagged it for me. I came in and bought it. My brother wanted the next copy. 4-5 days later another copy came in and he got that one. Apparently some people had been asking for it, but because it wasn't in stock they didn't buy one. Eventually they sold a couple more but they never had more than one in stock at any time. I don't know what the EB purchaser was smoking because they could have sold many more. I was expecting at least 4 or 5 like they would get for even the crappiest windows release of a new game.

Also Amazon.com wouldn't let you preorder. THis is the way I obtain most of my cd's, dvd's, etc. I order them way in advance and usually get a decent discount. Then they just magically show up on my door. Works well. I talked to Amazon's customer support department and they just said they didn't know when they'd get it and that they wouldn't accept pre-orders. I don't know if they ever got it in. That hurt sales as Amazon has got to be the biggest software retailer.

THe funny thing is that I never play Q3 anymore... I have decided to stop playing games about 6 months before it came out, yet I put down my $40 to support commercial Linux releases. I've got a cool tin box if nothing else... the CD is still in the cellophane if memory serves. I guess I wish more of the other members of the community voted with their dollars.

-k

Re:What do they expect?

[cronos-cronos]

Tuzanor has a very good point. Linux is pretty much in its "early stages" of non-commercial use. It has, for a long time, been thought of for strictly business use because of it's scalability, multi-user and SMP capabilites. Only recently has it come into the light as a desktop OS. It will definitely take a lot of time for linux gaming to take off. Much of this needed time will have to go into the development of the OS itself so that it will be more presentable for use as a gaming OS. Maybe another reason linux gaming isn't taking off so quickly, is because it costs to buy many of the "brand name" games that are out there. After all, linux's (and unix based OS's) main strength is that it's FREE

Remember DOS games in 1995-96?

[Goonie]

Anybody remember the last category of software that used DOS as its main platform? That's right, games! It took a year or two until there was a sufficient installed base of computers, running a version of Windows that was even vaguely suitable for games, before Windows-specific games started to appear in numbers.

As Xfree 4.0 matures, and more and more people start using Linux as their only operating system, Linux games will start to appear in greater numbers.

No, Quake isn't selling...

[golliher]

Quake != all Linux games. I've bought just about
evey title Loki has published, but I didn't buy
Quake. I bought Unreal Tournament instead.

For one thing I could buy UT for $29 and download the Linux binaries. Q3 however was $60 and impossible to find locally. They were too similar to buy both, and my judgement was that UT was better-- and at half the price the decision was a no brainer.

Err... That would be Carmack's /. post...

[Temporal]

The quote you see was taken from a post by John Carmack to Slashdot a couple of days ago. So, Slashdot is essentially reporting on its own user comments and it doesn't even realize it. :)

I don't know what's up with the Win2000Mag link. Anyone figured that out?

------

It's not all that surprising

[Trepalium]

Considering the fairly sorry state of 3D acceleration right at this moment, it's not all that surprising. Sure we have XFree86 4.0, but it's been plagued with problems, incompatibilities, etc.

Re:It's not all that surprising

[skoda]

Even if hardware were perfectly supported and Q3A for Linux was readily available, it would still be surprising if it did *well*.

Linux is a niche market, primarily (I'm guessing) run on dual-boot PCs, which usually have some version of windows and supported hardware. So, most people who could/would buy a game for Linux could/would buy it for Windows as well.

Since most of their other games are likely for Windows, it's not unreasonable for them to buy Q3A (or whatever) for windows, instead of Linux, just out of simplicity/momentum.

The ones who did buy it are the early-adopters, and that's generally a small crowd.

Reasons why Quake3 for Linux didn't sell well:

[iCEBaLM]

1. The Windows version was available first and you could just download the Linux binaries later.
2. The Linux version wasn't as widely distributed as the Windows version (bn.com didn't have it nor did most online "etailers", local software places here didn't have it, etc)
3. Linux 3D video card support *at the time* wasn't very good, it has improved with the NVidia drivers, XF86 4, DRI, etc. Gamers would buy the Windows version as their hardware would work there, then once it worked in Linux download the Linux binaries.

-- iCEBaLM

Simple reasons for games not selling (duh)

[xtal]

This isn't rocket science.. these articles are stupid because they paint linux in a bad light without really looking at the underlying issues, that people like Carmack, Redhat, et al. should be working on instead of useless installers that don't really do anything new.

• USB support. Yeah, it's there, it works OK, but it's a sweet fuggin pain in the ass to get working. In windows; I plug my rio/joystick whatever in, it's detected, the driver prompted or in most cases automatically set up, and then through the magics of DirectX, all games see it. Linux doesn't have anything even CLOSE right now. Although - the underlying USB stuff is slick - the intergration into the desktop (Gnome, etc) isn't there yet.
  
• 3D support. See above. You can "get it working", but it's a sweet pain in the ass. Hopefully XF4.0 will fix this. The support isn't out of the box, like it is for windows. This is a major impediment to most people who just tinker with linux.
  
• Retailers. They don't stock the linux versions, and most of the time, you can just get a free upgrade and get the linux binaries to play the game (Quake).
  
• Windows is everywhere. Like it or not, Windows does a much much better job with games and multimedia right now than linux. TV tuners, video codecs.. you name it. They have linux counterparts, but they all work better and the new stuff always comes out on windows first. As a result of this - most people will dual boot or have windows available for playing games, which is what I do. As a result, the hobby developers don't waste time on the gaming / multimedia aspects of linux, or they have patent and other issues to deal with, and can't do anything. Redhat, ID, or SOMEONE should -fund- yes -fund- some development to get a standardized system like DirectX in place, and act as a standards board so we can get things like video codecs available in linux - even in binary format. A lot of that is patented by companies that aren't ever going to give up those rights, unfortunately.
  

Linux has a long way to come in the multimedia/gaming/video arena, and I don't see anyone offering any real leadership. I'm still pissed that RedHat can't use that billion dollar market cap to grab NVidia and the other 3D manufacturers by the balls and get drivers released. Oh well.

Re:Simple reasons for games not selling (duh)

[AndrewHowe]

I'm a game developer, and I've got a problem with what you're saying.
Why should John Carmack be making Linux better? Sure, he worked on the Matrox driver, because he was "scratching an itch".
But he makes games. He needs to concentrate on what he does best. If members of the Linux community want games to be viable on their platform, then they need to sort it out.
I'm not entirely convinced that Linux is at all suited to games right now. Consider the console vs PC situation. Consoles provide a known environment that's relatively easy to program for. PCs running windows are more variable, but still pretty reasonable. A Win32 binary runs without too much trouble on any Win32 platform.
Linux is pretty scary for a game developer because there are so many configurations out there. Also you have the basic level of contempt that the general Linux user has for closed source products. Sure, one answer would be to go Open Source, but I suspect that few games companies are about to go down that route; Also we effectively work for publishers, and whereas we're happy to work for not much more than the satisfaction of a job well done, you will find that "money talks and bullshit walks" a lot of the time.
I can see a time when Windows and Linux developers will meet somewhere in the middle; I just hope we won't all be carrying weapons when we do...

It breaks even ... that's good news...

[Ami Ganguli]

I wouldn't have expected a Linux game to even break even. Linux is doing amazingly well in the Internet server market, but I didn't think the Linux desktop market really existed yet.

If it's true that the port paid for itself then game manufacturers can now afford to support Linux without losing their shirts. Seeing more games available will encourage users to switch to Linux. Seeing more users will encourage more game producers. Once the positive feedback loop is established things will snowball.

Getting to that break-even point is the hard part. If we've really reached it then this is a significant event.

Lessons from the Amiga...

[sheldon]

I am a former Amiga zealot, from 1987-1991 the Amiga was the greatest computer in the world, at least in my world.

The Amiga was actually fairly popular as a game machine, and we had a number of titles available which were quite successful. Most of the Psygnosis stuff, a few crossover games from the Atari ST like DungeonMaster, etc.

But I'd also say that the reality was the Amiga had the highest percentage of software piracy of any platform available at the time.

It came from a couple of basic issues:

#1. Most Amiga users were college students, without much money.
#2. Most Amiga users were afraid to commit a lot of money to their system because it was fringe. That is, there was always this fear in the back of ones mind that next year you'd buy a new computer and it wouldn't use any of your current stuff.

Reason #2 also held true in later years when I turned to OS/2. I never once purchased an OS/2 specific version of software, in fact I knew few people who did. We'd rely strickly upon the Win-OS/2 and DOS compatibility.

What's worse with OS/2 was that reason #1 on the Amiga never even held. Corporations who had money also didn't buy OS/2 software.

Anyway. I think these issues that hurt the Amiga still hold true today, except that college students seem to have more money than we did back then. Working $10/hour jobs instead of $3/hour has an impact on the beer budget. :)

But on top of that Linux users in general have also taken on this attitude that not being able to afford software isn't the problem, it's those EVIL GREEDY corporations actually putting a price tag on software. Software should be free, and as such it is immoral for one to buy software.

It's a very strange paradox, and one which will never really put Linux in a position of encouraging development from commercial software companies.

Oh, one problem the Amiga also had. We went around telling all the software companies that if only they'd write software we would buy it. Of course they did write software, and instead we pirated it. After a few years of this, a large number of companies simply stopped supporting the Amiga.

Of course we said that was because their software was crap. Of course the fact that we pirated it and used it meant it was not realy crap, we were just hypocritical.

Basic lesson there is, don't tell companies there is a market for something unless there actually is a market.