World of Goo and myths about games on Linux
Par Alexis Bauchu le mercredi, novembre 4 2009, 12:19 - Jeux Vidéo - Lien permanent
I'd like to share with you some stats that 2D Boy published after the big sales they had for the 1 year birthday of World Of Goo (WoG for short). The point was that you had the choice in the price of the game, from 0.01$ to whatever you want. 2DBoy released the results of the first week of that event: they sold a lot of copies of the game, but most of them at 0.01$, which means 0$ because this all goes to PayPal for the transaction. So they tried again for another week and the game kept selling good but this time, at a much better average price, certainly due to people knowing that 2DBoy don't really get any money under a paid price of 1$.
But what I'd like to highlight, is the results per OS. It's a well know fact that if you wanna play games on a computer, you must have Windows, otherwise your choice is very poor (extremely poor on GNU / Linux). Developers and publishers don't care much about the other platforms and I bet they think the market is not big enough on these systems. But if you look at the market shares of WoG, you get a surprise:
During those two weeks, only 65% of copies of WoG were downloaded for Windows! This is far from being an undeniable domination of the market! GNU / Linux gets 17% of sold copies and Mac OS gets 18%. In these days where the iPod and the iPhone are real hits, Apple is regaining a fair number of shares of the desktop computer market, so the Mac score is quite understandable. But it's a bit more surprising for Linux. It seems obvious then that the fans of the penguin crave for games on their OS. It's easy to say that people don't play on Linux, when in fact there's just no game to play. So that's one myth busted. Note: last christmas, the guys from Wolfire got to the same conclusion and wrote a nice article about why developers should support Mac OS and Linux.
Another myth is that Linux users (and more generally open source fans) are cheap people, that they always want everything for nothing. Well guess what, here's the graph of the average price paid for WoG, per OS:
I say: myth busted
What system do you use? Do you play games on it?
Commentaires
Hmmm... Talking about numbers is one thing, putting them in perspective is another. ^_^
Indeed, there are a lot of Linux copies saled, and for "more that those guys on Windows". But it's just for the first week of the "Pay what you want" event. And, i think, something's missing. There's no number of the first year of selling WoG. How many windows copy on Steam ? Impulse ? How many Mac versions ? How many Linux ? See what i mean ?
The problem with those numbers is that they just concern a little part of their sales, on a very limited timeframe. I'd be curious to see "all the datas" available, such as : how many people bought more than one copy ? How many people own it on more than one platform ? How many bought it at $20 (normal Steam price), or less (during promotions) etc etc.
I guess the average price on the whole year would be a more interesting data. But hey, after all, the main point is : They sold some more. And that's great ^_^
and i guess that the true question is "How many opportunists just bought it to 'regularize' their warez version". But that's a difficult question, with no real data :D
(did my first comment, with an in depth and incredibly clever analysis of the market just disappeared, or it is marked as spam in your comment system ?)
Went to spam. Don't know why.
Also, I'm 90% sure that those who 'regularized' their warez version were playing it on Win32 :p
Now, would it be profitable to release a NEW game and sell it with this means. That's a big question.
@Flo: To answer your first comment, I'd say that I'd much like to know too how they did on all the platforms (they also sold it on WiiWare).
But these numbers are the results after two weeks, not just one. I agree that they are a bit flawed, because we can't see the whole picture. It's also not true to say that people bought the game "for linux" or "for windows" because you buy the game once and you can then download it for Nux, Win or Mac, as many times as you want. Nevertheless, it's a fact that a big part of the downloads were for alternative OSs during those two weeks.
I guess my point is just to remind that there are Linux and Mac gamers and the main reason they don't play is because games aren't ported to their OS.
Besides, the numbers from Wolfire Team comprise all the sales of Lugaru and yet, they have only 45% of sales for windows. But maybe that works only for indie devs...