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Hemisphere Games Reveals Osmos Linux Sales Numbers
An anonymous reader writes "Hemisphere Games analyzes the sales numbers for their Linux port of Osmos and ask themselves, 'Is it worth porting games to Linux?' The short, simple answer is 'yes.' Breakdown and details in the post."
A few other interesting details: the port took them about two man-months of work, the day they released for Linux was their single best sales day ever, and they got a surprising amount of interest from Russia and Eastern Europe. Their data only reflects sales through their website, and they make the point that "the lack of a strong Linux portal makes it a much less 'competitive' OS for commercial development." Hopefully someday the rumored Steam Linux client will help to solve that.
Until Valve says anything about a Linux client, it's just rumor and speculation.
And contrary to what Phoronix has reported for a couple of years now, Valve has not said one word about a Linux port.
Linux geeks like video games, but have barely any available natively. They'll pay to encourage others to be ported in the future. It's a pretty simple idea. I find it fairly remarkable that people are just figuring this out.
"Windows for gaming" will still be the chant for the next 5+ years I fear, but I have to wonder some... "What If" someone got together with some other somepeople and created a "Linux gaming standard distribution" or something similar to LSB for gaming... something similar to "Wine bottles" but for game installation and playing. This could make Linux gaming SO much easier and more direct. It could ALSO aid in making the games more controllable by the software publishers (I know, no one likes that idea except the software publishers...) but consider that this would make a really nice link between console gaming and PC gaming. If this were to happen and somehow catch on, (yeah I know... fat chance) the new chant would be "Linux for gaming* because it can be faster and better than Windows can.
Are there still people running Windows 9X for their games? Last I saw (years ago) that was the case... makes me want to load up Win9X and then set up XvT and such... Those were some good ole days!
That part was most surprising for me - whilst I think .rpm is more of the standard for server based business apps, it appears debia (ie ubuntu) is the predominant platform for clients.
Ok, it doesn't surprise me at all now I've thought it through :)
Yes, but does it run on.....oh.
One puzzle game proves that it's worth it to port to Linux?
If it took two months to port a puzzle game, imagine how much time and expenses it would take to port a big-name game with much higher technical demands and support requirements.
I don't think linux will become a more profitable platform to target than windows for major game houses in any sort of foreseeable future, but I think that graph from the article makes a pretty strong case for indie developers to target linux.
Good news for indy developers (who now have a larger potential audience), and of course good news for linux users.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I hate to ask this because it sounds like looking a gift horse in the mouth, but how on earth did it take them two man-months? I ported my game engine over and it took about a week. And that's with manual X11 calls - if I'd wimped out and used a library for it, it would've taken just a few days.
What exactly took the time there?
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Gaming is one of the last things keeping people from switching to Linux entirely. Once the Linux gaming scene picks up steam (pun intended), "those in the know" will have no reason to retain an installation of Windows. The increase in user base will spur further development in the areas of Linux that are inferior to Windows at the moment.
There was a time when games came with a "DOS extender" program that allowed the game to use machine resources that weren't available to MS-DOS. It wasn't such a big deal for the software companies to ship that small program together with the game, and it wasn't such a big deal for the user to install it.
Imagine if games came in a live Linux CD-ROM. MS-Windows users could play those games with all the benefits of Linux and Linux users would have a natively compilated game.
Last week I found my original Tomb Raider CD lost in the bottom of a drawer. I tried to install it in XP, without success. I was considering installing windows 98 in an old computer, just to play that game again, when a friend suggested me to run it in a DOS box. I got it installed in DOSemu and it's awesome how well it runs in Ubuntu, with an i5-750 and a 9600 GSO graphics card.
I'm currently writing a 3D game for Linux using OpenGL and SDL. In a way those two cover a lot of bases, but there are some glaring holes as well:
* Middleware. DX owns the game middleware market.
* IDEs. I'm using kdevelop, and have looked at Eclipse, but there is no Linux IDE that can come close to Visual Studio. I say this as a huge Linux advocate, and someone who barely ever even boots into Windows - but credit where it's due, MSVC is simply a better product.
Otherwise, I don't see much reason to tie your game to just Windows and DX. Even boost helps a ton - it provides a lot of platform independent libraries to make your portability life easier.
there's only about 5 distros you need to support tho, and that's probably being a little generous.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
it was between 15% and 20% of their total sales, so if they lost money on it they probably lost money on the whole thing.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Totally unrelated, but can I just take a minute to thank you for not calling it a "blog"? :)
Bow-ties are cool.
Thanks to Slashdot for the article which made me buy a Linux compatible game. Level two baby!!!!!
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
What happens if you need something that is NOT cross platform to Linux? You then have to develop an in house version of it. Ok, but that is increasing the cost of development over all, not just for the Linux version.
An example for commercial titles would be Speedtree, Scaleform, or any number of other middleware apps that do not have Linux ports. None of them do anything you couldn't write yourself, however they simplify development thus reducing time thus reducing cost. Scaleform is used to make resolution independent UIs easily and quickly. It gives artists robust tools so that they can design UIs right away. The programmers then can make use of them. This is cheaper than having to have the programmers write not only the UI code for the engine, but then tools for the artists to make the UIs and so on.
So in a complex title you might well find costs of the Windows version going up because the tools you use aren't available for Linux. Saying "Just use something else," or "Just write your own," isn't an answer. The question isn't if it is technically possible to do it, the question is it economical to do it. The amount of expected sales has to exceed the costs by a non-trivial amount.
This "linux gaming" concept is a very interesting subject, and perhaps my fellow slashdotters can help my brain tackle some "ethical dilemma's" that I am facing. Some quick backstory.. I love me some computer games. Grew up on the stuff.. Civ 1 was my first true computer game.. it came bundled with our first cd-rom drive that my dad bought. I never went back to a console again. I grew up, but never outgrew gaming.. although these days I try to temper "frivolous entertainment" with worthwhile projects and contributions to reality ;-)
Still, a system's "gaming potential" is the primary factor I must consider when working on my personal box.. and is one of the reasons I still have to boot back into Windows all the time. In fact, it is usually easier for me to just arrange everything in Windows so that I can do all my "*Nixy stuff" from inside Win7.. Cygwin, ssh, etc.. so that when I need to unwind for a few mins on TF2 pwning newbs I don't need to close EVERYthing and reboot into Win.. pain in my butt if I may say so.
For this reason, I have been eagerly anticipating Steam on Linux for many years.. the rumors began in '08, right? Shouldn't this be a very exciting prospect for me? Well.. I guess it has only been the last several months that Steam has started "irking" me.. Something about DRM and "anti-competitive behavior".. and for me to continue playing on Steam I feel I am having to compromise my personal code.
When I compare Steam to iTunes.. it comes down to just a few differences:
Steam is owned by Valve (yay Valve!), one of the best darn CPU game developing houses out there.
CPU games are much more appealing to me than music
But there are too many similarities for me to be comfortable:
DRM, anticompetitive practices, proprietary software platform requirement, Draconian developer/publisher agreement policies (ok I cannot verify that rumor).. yeah yeah, I know, a business is in the business of making money, blah blah.
I love my computer games, and I have loved EVERY SINGLE ONE of Valves products. And I know that Steam on Linux is probably going to be a net win for my favorite operating environment.. but I can't help but shake the feeling that Steam doesn't BELONG on Linux.. Does that make sense, or am I just being a whiny bitch? Flame-baiting aside.. I know that Steam has done some wonderful things for various small-time developers.. and that they are WORLDS better as publishers than the rip-off artists at EA, so it is all a very gray area for me..
I could go on for pages, but I will cut this short. In conclusion, I want to shout out Hooray for LINUX GAMING! It will be wonderful for me and for millions in the long run. I just wonder whether Steam should be the platform that we are pinning our hopes on.
10 - 11 years ago I was working for a small shop that produced some graphics tools for Windows & IRIX. It was clear that IRIX was going the way of the DODO and we were looking to port and Linux came up. Red Hat was the "standard" standard of the day so we ported the application to RH. Shortly there after linux accounted for less than 5% of sales and about 12% of technical support requests. We found that very few were even running "standard" builds of Red Hat. It seemed like folks in those days would set up their user libraries in different locations because of this reason or that reason. It was a nightmare. Granted, most people that tinkered with their installs understood the problem was *theirs* and some paid a bunch of $$$ in support costs because of it. But there were that vocal few that really turned me off the linux "community" as a whole for a decade now. The next release dropped Linux support in favor of OSX because we started to see a demand from Apple users.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
You only really need to support Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, and Suse?
Gentoo users will figure it out themselves. :P
Many distros have Ubuntu compatibility, so if it works in Ubuntu, it'll work for them. Ubuntu is by far the biggest target.
> We found that very few were even running "standard" builds of Red Hat. It seemed like folks in those days would
> set up their user libraries in different locations because of this reason or that reason. It was a nightmare.
So? Do an OpenStep style package setup or use statically linked binaries.
The fact that libraries are in a strange place on some system should have 0.0 impact on anything.
Unix simply isn't the sort of thing that shatters when you wiggle some little part of it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> it was between 15% and 20% of their total sales, so if they lost money on it they probably lost money on the whole thing.
Yes. I just love how these drones keep on repeating the idea that the port didn't make sense economically when clearly the actual article flatly contradicts that idea.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Wed, June 23 2010
Is grateful to Slashdot for finally noticing that LGP exists, after militantly ignoring any game release we have made for the last 5 years, as soon as reports of our death come through, we get a front page story. Slashdot - Your support of Linux is inspirational.
For others who wonder, we are very much alive. We have had a couple of staffing issues on the admin side of things, which explains most of our silence, but work is progressing on more than one unannounced title. We will offer further updates as and when there is news to update you with.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Unix simply isn't the sort of thing that shatters when you wiggle some little part of it.
If you've ever messed with Loki_Compat libraries in order to get some old Linux ports to work even on newer versions of Linux, you know that running old software on new Linux (or any Unix, really, save for SunOS) is typically a problem. In particular, when libc has gone through a major version change there are often problems.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
... the people who bought it because it worked with wine. I, for one, bought it back when there was no linux client, just because it had a 'platinum' (or gold maybe) rating from in the winehq app database. I wouldn't have bought it otherwise, but I was happy when I got a native client. The game is nice, though, and I would love to see it's source code released (like Aquaria,Gish,Lugaru and Penumbra, all of which have already released their source code). I'm very curious about how they do many of the things they do....
"t took Dave six weeks to do the port, including time spent testing across multiple flavours of Linux, and running the beta from start to end."
"Valve has also confirmed that it will make Steam available to Linux users in the coming months." - telegraph.co.uk (this is on the website of national UK newspaper).
It's not the quote you explicitly sought but I would argue it makes it seem like Valve have said something about a Linux port. Regardless, your overall point that the source of information should be scrutinized definitely holds...
Well, it apparently got lots of great reviews (according to the game's website). But the video of it makes it looks like it's just a less interesting version of the first stage in Spore
Property is theft.
This doesn't tell us exactly which sort of financial troubles Loki encountered. Was it from low sales? Or an internal problem? Was it with the way they paid developers? Going to too many Linux conferences? (Please don't tell me it was from porting to LinuxPPC... we actually sold a fair number of Loki titles.) Please note that I'm not challenging the user icebraining, but rather the vague language of the summary. We were all saddened when Loki closed. I occasionally daydream of grabbing an on PPC box, installing LinuxPPC 2000 Q4, and having a go at it again..
-- haaz.
please, 10-11 years ago linux people were a completely different breed, most people installed linux back then and said wtf can i do with this now i've spent 5 hrs figuring out how the hell to get this actually running. the actual users were pretty freaking hard core, nowadays 95% (80% if i'm being generous) of linux users would probably get totally lost recompiling a kernel.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.