Why don't studios say "Wow what an opportunity, we are developing for linux!!"
I love that you said that, because this means I can do this
awesome reply. Here is what they (developers of Amnesia)
actually said:
We think it is a good incentive for other stores to support Linux as well!
Perhaps not quite as enthusiastic, but given the tone of the rest of the
article, I think it's pretty much that.
Here's some more hard facts regarding distribution of sales when targeting Mac, Linux and Windows.
Frictional Games (Amnesia):
The distribution between platforms depends a bit on how you count it. In our own store it is as follows:
Windows: 70%
Linux: 15%
Mac: 15%
(World of Goo):
We were expecting the average price paid to be highest for Linux users and lowest for Windows users, but the gap was larger than we thought it would be [...]
Also, the per-platform download breakdown was pretty surprising, with Windows accounting for 65%, and Mac and Linux pretty much splitting the remainder evenly
.
Put in other words, not targeting Mac and Linux could mean
losing 35% of your downloads, potentially more so in actual money (since Linux users are, if you trust the data, willing to pay more).
Anectodial evidence is nice and all, but not very helpful. Here's another story: I know two people who own linux and would love to see more games on them - both of them NOT buying games they were interested in because they were only avaible for Windows.
This proves nothing, of course - just as your story does not make anyone any smarter. But the data given above is a much better indication, since it's sample size is actually big enough for useful conclusions.
PadMalcom, we've discussed the problems with console-development before a thousand times. Short story: Without the platform owner (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo - take your pick) giving you explicit permission AND a devkit, you won't make it far.
This means that porting to those platforms would benefit
at the most the absolute best games we have here. Perhaps not even them.
Mac and Linux support is someone everyone can benefit, and something that has
proven time and time again to be worth it. If Conitec were to invest that time into porting to XBox/PS3/Wii instead, that would be wasted time for 99,999% of the community - perhaps (IMHO) for all of us.
If you still wish for that, could you at least do it in a new thread? This one should be about porting to Mac/Linux.
