Hemisphere Games Reveals Osmos Linux Sales Numbers 131
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.
Valve hasn't said a word. (Score:4, Insightful)
And contrary to what Phoronix has reported for a couple of years now, Valve has not said one word about a Linux port.
One game? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Two man-months? (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Actual porting of the game - if you read the article, the guy who did the port did not know the codebase from the start - you propably knew your codebase in and out ? ..
2) Multi format packaging - its not only about building debian rules or spec file and you are set - if you target multiple platforms and hardware architectures via proper packaging - you need to be checking a lot of build options with dependencies..
3) website changes
4) and testing
And last, possible promotion ?
Releasing stuff might not always be just about making the code compile and hoping it works..
Re:Two man-months? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah it is, you install vmware and drop a bunch of distros in. That week included testing on ubuntu 10.04, ubuntu 8.04, kubuntu 10.04, ubuntu 10.04-64, fedora 12, and debian 5.04.
(Doesn't currently work on ubuntu 10.04-64 but that's mostly due to me being lazy with 64-bit porting. Works on all the rest, though.)
Re:Valve hasn't said a word. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to see a Linux client, but Valve hasn't said anything about it. The fact that people from Phoronix hacked together an alpha quality client is meaningless.
Re:Duh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Remember DOS extenders? (Score:5, Insightful)
What benefits? I only see drawbacks:
- terrible loading times (wasting the hard drive advantage)
- having to reboot
- having to configure the network to play online games. Since it's a LiveCD, having to store those configurations in a USB disk or losing them
- wasting the integration of systems like Steam
In general, that would be like playing on a PS2 with better graphics. No thank you.
Re:Really good news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Remember DOS extenders? (Score:1, Insightful)
Plus how the drivers installed on the Linux LiveCD would be outdated the minute something new was released, and there would be no good way to patch the disc.
Re:Valve hasn't said a word. (Score:2, Insightful)
God what I wouldn't do for mod powers right now.
Re:Valve hasn't said a word. (Score:1, Insightful)
(And neither does mine)