Humble Bundle 2 - Non technical discussion

[amauk]

non-technical discussion? That's very diplomatic of you.

[Perfect Storm]

non-technical discussion? That's very diplomatic of you.

It's part of my job to be diplomatic

[weasel fierce]

Since you're leaving, I'll tell you this: From working on numerous projects, the costs of extending platforms greatly outweighs the revenue that would be generated. Hopefully, you can understand, one day, why a lot of software doesn't reach Linux.

I guess it's a good thing the humble bundle guys didn't get that memo, huh?

[amauk]

Just to put some solid numbers on this

Total revenue from the bundle is (at the time of writing): $880,491.92
5 games in the bundle, so each game has received: $176,098.38
25% of the revenue is from Linux users: $44,024.60

44 thousand USD revenue has been generated by Linux users for each game in the bundle

Braid (one of the 5 games) cost $200,000 to develop.
Linux purchases alone have covered 22% of the game'd development costs

If you think there's no market for native linux games, you're potty...

[Valthar]

I think more than anything else, the humble bundle has shown that this type of model with enough backing can work. This is huge for Linux AND Apple

This bundle is an exception though, not all bundles will be created equal or get anywhere near as much exposure as this one, but this shows that if done right, they can do very well.

With that said, the graph does show that if you bring a hit to linux, you can make money off of it. Less than 5% of the pc market contributing 20% of the total revenue of a giftpack/donation/whatever you want to call it piece of packaged software is VERY VERY significant no matter how you slice it.