LGP Announces Two More Titles

dolson writes "Earlier today Linux Game Publishing announced the next two titles that they will be porting to Linux. They are both made by Grim, a Swedish development company, and they are called Ballistics and Bandits: Phoenix Rising. One is a high-speed racing game, and the other is a driving/action game."

Comments

Do Linux Games Sell?

[tealover]

What is the best selling linux game of all time and how does that compare to the best selling PC games?

Just curious. I myself bought the Quake 2 games for Linux but that was a couple of years ago. I primarily play console games now.

Not really, but picking up the pace...

[Anonymous Coward]

One industry insider compares the community to the Macintosh community ("Small but fanatical", in his words). Apparently, while the Mac community is still considered a reasonable investment for many companies, the perception of rampant piracy among Linux users was largely bourne out in Loki Software's books. He explained that a niche programming company needed something like 24% penetration at normal game pricing to achieve a reasonable return, but that the last three 'blockbusters' got anywhere between 2%-5% of the estimated Linux base, which was rather surprising given the quality of the software he said (comparatively, they got between 10%-16% of the Windows market, which factored heavily into the design considerations for future product).

I pointed out that there isn't much point to running Quake and whatnot on a server, and he agreed, saying that if Linux ever really makes it to the desktop these companies that were just targeting it in the first place because it was "the next big thing" will revisit it.

What About Tux Racer? ;)

[Milo Fungus]

I think Tux Racer is about the coolest game I've ever played. My very favorite course is "Who Says Penguins Can't Fly?" although I have become somewhat partial to "Path of Daggers" lately. Anyone else out there love Tux Racer?

Forget dual booting

[tjwhaynes]

To all of those who think that dual booting really holds the secret to playing games when most of your work is done in Linux - forget it. This machine here I'm on has Windows 98 and an up to date Linux distro. I bought Black & White almost on the day of release, thinking that I would boot into Windows just to play it. Its a great game, particularly if you liked Populous. But after a week, it has barely seen the light of day. Rebooting back and forth is too much of a pain. When I want to play, it's normally for 30-40 minutes. If I reboot back and forth, it had better be really worth it. I got hold of GTA3 and it's the same story. I got off the first island and it hasn't been played since.

Now I have a healthy collection of Linux games on my box, including a fair number of Loki ports, some of the source code released games (Abuse, Freespace 1 & 2, Aliens vs Predator), and a bunch of improving open source projects, from Vegastrike to Foobillard. And Black & White and the other Windows only games don't provide sufficient allure to make me reach for the reboot.

LGP seems to have the right idea. The games they are porting are good games in their categories and they aren't costing a fortune for the porting rights. They are also managing to get games in more genres than just first person shooters. I hope that LGP hangs around long enough to break even or preferably show a profit. I hope that the Linux desktop market is starting to expand at a sufficient rate that the future for Linux gaming actually exists and that LGP is in a good position to reap the rewards.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes