It's Official: Valve Releasing Steam, Source Engine For Linux!

[Svartalf]

Paying more for the same item available on other systems at a lower price.

They don't do that or else I'd have gotten money for Ballistics and I'd have seen Bandits finally published and gotten money for that as well...

It could be said that linux users overspend out of desperation to get more recognition.

Really... Perhaps so. Perhaps not. I didn't pay $15 each for MY copy (no I don't get freebies...) or my brother's birthday present I bought him mout of "desperation". I strongly suspect that many are in the same boat as I was on that score. It's not likely to be desperation as you think it is.

I'm not saying the HB devs should not be satisfied. Just don't expect the big boys to be satisfied utilizing the same business model.

Business model... You're deluding yourself if they're going to look at the business model that produced this. They only look at the results for a metric- mainly because each genre of game's got a different business model for it and looking at business models only helps a bit if you're trying to "reproduce" a success like Blizzard did with WoW or EA did with something like Burnout Paradise.

I wouldn't say they suck the community dry. If anything the largest communities are from the commercial games. WoW, COD, HL2, UE3, etc etc all have HUGE communities that are doing quite well. The big boys don't care about ~ 1.8 million in sales when one of their games are capable of selling in excess of a billion dollars in sales.

If you think that...heh...you'd be mistaken. If it costs them little overall and it gains them even a tenth of a percent, they're going to scoop it up as long as it looks "good" on the capital margins picture. Every cent of profit matters to them- they're not doing Linux stuff because it's still a big unknown to most of them. They don't have a quantified number like they've got for Windows or OSX systems that tells them just where the expense is actually worth the seemingly piddling amount.

The biggest problem is that we as a community keep thinking that we can petition our way into that situation. Sales numbers, whatever form that takes on, is what speaks to them. Some of your remarks work against you, actually.

Overpaying... If the percentages are right, that'll just induce them to make stuff for us... They're about making a profit, after all.

Desperation for recognition... Heh... If the percentages are right, that'll help. Same thinking.

In the end...it's all about numbers. Something you keep missing in your reasonings.

[deanjo]

In the end...it's all about numbers. Something you keep missing in your reasonings.

Actually all of my observations are made solely on the numbers. You just take an optimistic ideal view on them vs my bean counter take.

[deanjo]

Bottom line Svartalf, are AAA title publishers banging on your door asking you to do a game port over to linux? If not, do you think HB's "success" is going to change that?

[Svartalf]

Actually all of my observations are made solely on the numbers. You just take an optimistic ideal view on them vs my bean counter take.

Really, deanjo... "bean counter take"?

If...

Roughly 20% of the proceeds were Linux users buying the title, paying an average of $13.76.

And...

Roughly 20% of the proceeds were OSX users buying the title, paying on average of $9.26.

And...

Roughly 60% of the proceeds were Windows users buying the title, paying on average of $7.83.

With...

A proceeds that weighs in at $1,823,136.66


That's the start of a "bean counter take" on things. Let's run some numbers to get a rough "bean counter" idea of what we know about things...


$1,823,136.66 x 0.60 = $1,093,882.00
$1093881.99 / $7.83 = 139704 Windows users...

$1,823,136.66 x 0.20 = $364,627.33
$364,627.33 / $9.26 = 39376 OSX users
$364,627.33 / $13.76 = 26499 Linux users

This is using the averages alone- so it doesn't match up to the actual count. It's been openly stated for both HIB's that Windows users paid significantly less in for the bulk of the user base (There's a figure you should factor in against the Windows side of things- if they're going to be paying less than $7 for the title, how many of them are committing acts of infringement against your titles??) So we could probably add the "missing" users into the figure for the Windows users and have it "largely right". With that in mind...


232,849 total customers for HIB #2.
166,974 total customers using Windows.
39,376 total customers using OSX.
26,499 total customers using Linux.

This results in the following percentages:

72% of the estimated customer base uses Windows.
17% of the estimated customer base uses OSX
11% of the estimated customer base uses Linux.

The other sales figures I have for Linux put Linux well ahead of anything other than iPhone sales of the title, so this may be skewed because Linux users were less interested in the HIB #2 titles than the other game I ported. It should be noted that if you factor in a bunch of people on the OSX side and the Linux side underpaying the average by a bit, some of those "Windows" users I dropped in that bucket would move over to the other slots accordingly- with the result of the percentages dropping for Windows and increasing in the buckets for the other OSes accordingly. So, while being really, really rough numbers, you can see there's quite a bit more to the story than you're trying to paint here.

Unless you did this little mental exercise here that I've expounded upon, you can't have a "bean counter's take" on this as that's what a bean counter would have done on the subject, even if it were all in their head that they did it. Bean counters wouldn't care about "business models", that's an executive management thing. Bean counters would've just cared about the numbers like I've laid out here.

[Svartalf]

Bottom line Svartalf, are AAA title publishers banging on your door asking you to do a game port over to linux? If not, do you think HB's "success" is going to change that?

I'm unsure. I do know that it's going to open up doors for things.

As to whether it opens up AAA titles yet or not remains to be seen- it's enough to show 11% figures to be able to get more indie titles at least and I do know that the previous HIB caught some people's attention enough to start watching what's going on.

[deanjo]

Really, deanjo... "bean counter take"?

If...

Roughly 20% of the proceeds were Linux users buying the title, paying an average of $13.76.

And...

Roughly 20% of the proceeds were OSX users buying the title, paying on average of $9.26.

And...

Roughly 60% of the proceeds were Windows users buying the title, paying on average of $7.83.

With...

A proceeds that weighs in at $1,823,136.66


That's the start of a "bean counter take" on things. Let's run some numbers to get a rough "bean counter" idea of what we know about things...


$1,823,136.66 x 0.60 = $1,093,882.00
$1093881.99 / $7.83 = 139704 Windows users...

$1,823,136.66 x 0.20 = $364,627.33
$364,627.33 / $9.26 = 39376 OSX users
$364,627.33 / $13.76 = 26499 Linux users

This is using the averages alone- so it doesn't match up to the actual count. It's been openly stated for both HIB's that Windows users paid significantly less in for the bulk of the user base (There's a figure you should factor in against the Windows side of things- if they're going to be paying less than $7 for the title, how many of them are committing acts of infringement against your titles??) So we could probably add the "missing" users into the figure for the Windows users and have it "largely right". With that in mind...


232,849 total customers for HIB #2.
166,974 total customers using Windows.
39,376 total customers using OSX.
26,499 total customers using Linux.

This results in the following percentages:

72% of the estimated customer base uses Windows.
17% of the estimated customer base uses OSX
11% of the estimated customer base uses Linux.

The other sales figures I have for Linux put Linux well ahead of anything other than iPhone sales of the title, so this may be skewed because Linux users were less interested in the HIB #2 titles than the other game I ported. It should be noted that if you factor in a bunch of people on the OSX side and the Linux side underpaying the average by a bit, some of those "Windows" users I dropped in that bucket would move over to the other slots accordingly- with the result of the percentages dropping for Windows and increasing in the buckets for the other OSes accordingly. So, while being really, really rough numbers, you can see there's quite a bit more to the story than you're trying to paint here.

Lol, thanks for repeating basically my own calculations to me.

The proportions are more like 2:2:6

Some quick calculations here based on these reported numbers.



which would give us..

Unless you did this little mental exercise here that I've expounded upon, you can't have a "bean counter's take" on this as that's what a bean counter would have done on the subject, even if it were all in their head that they did it.

See above

Bean counters wouldn't care about "business models", that's an executive management thing. Bean counters would've just cared about the numbers like I've laid out here.

Sorry but bean counters make the recommendations to executive management if something is worthwhile or not. Ultimately it is the execs that make the calls but they do so on the bean counters recommendations.

[deanjo]

I'm unsure. I do know that it's going to open up doors for things.

Sure it will just like all the other ports in the past have done so.

As to whether it opens up AAA titles yet or not remains to be seen- it's enough to show 11% figures to be able to get more indie titles at least and I do know that the previous HIB caught some people's attention enough to start watching what's going on.

So in other words nothing has really changed when it comes to porting of commercial games that make up the vast majority of gaming out there.

[deanjo]

In fact where linux used to get the odd bone thrown to them with a AAA title we haven't seen that in close to three years (Prey being the last bone). If anything AAA titles that were planned or were there have been dropped over the last few years, such as WoW, UT3, EVE, etc despite linux's "growing numbers".

[Setlec]

i think that the last bone was etqw... but yeah we haven't seen AAA games since at least 3 years....

[deanjo]

i think that the last bone was etqw... but yeah we haven't seen AAA games since at least 3 years....

ET:QW came out in 2007, Prey came out 2008.