Are you developing a commercial Linux game?

[rogerborg]

Actually, the chances are that you aren't.

From ELSPA via the October 17th print edition of MCV, I bring you the quarter 3 2008 UK retail games sales.

By unit / by value:

Code: Select all

Nintendo Wii    24.9% / 25.4%
Nintendo DS     22.7% / 19.2%
(Windows) PC    19.3% / 18.8%
XBOX 360        12.3% / 16.0%
Playstation 3    9.2% / 12.6%
Playstation 2    6.5% / 4.1%
Sony PSP         4.8% / 3.4%
Apple Mac        0.1% / 0.5%
Others           0.2% / 0.0%

It doesn't matter how much of that 0.2% of the market that you corner, you're still getting a share of 0.0% of the revenue.

Has anyone got any evidence to the contrary? Is there any kind of demonstrable market for commercial Linux games? While Googling, I was amused to note that "Linux Games Publishing" are looking for devs with DirectX / Windows experience.

[CuteAlien]

We sold more than 0 units on Linux, so we should be slightly above 0.0% ;-) Don't ask how much - I don't know myself as we didn't get the numbers for that, I just have talked with a few guys who did buy our game on Linux.

But one of the real big problems is that there is just no good distribution channel for Linux games. Manifestogames was the best we could find so far. If you have boxed versions then there's additionally the mentioned LGP and I think there was one more. But nearly everyone else selling on Linux starts his own Website and tries to sell the games there.

If only the big distributors (Ubuntu, RedHad, Suse) would be offering a sale-channel... but sadly they don't care about games.

[rogerborg]

That is a bit peculiar, since games can actually drive (or at least support) OS uptake.

Perhaps they don't want to deal with support issues. Can you blame them?