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Comment by kayoone | Hacker News Reader

77 copies in a year? The same game sold 20.000 copies on Launchday on the Xbox360. Seems like Linux gaming still has a long way to go. Steam isnt doing it for direct profit reasons either, they just want to push the software platform of their new console!

But dont get me wrong, i like the direction, its just that linux gaming is totally irrelevant from a market perspective.

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First we're talking about a potentiel market restricted to ubuntu users, the small portion that would give money for a piece of software. Then we're talking about a game added to the ubuntu store when it was released in a pay what you want bundle. Then again the dev is known for having a poor opinion of linux and its communities. The port itself has a few bugs.

Not exactly the recipe for success here.

As an example, I'm a linux gamer, I own a copy of the humble bundle including super meat boy and after using it for a couple years, I for sure will stay away from ubuntu for technical, personal and ethical reasons. So don't expect my money showing up on the ubuntu store.

It was put in the store way after its initial release on most platforms. And I'm pretty sure anyone who got it in the humble bundle got a direct download.

Trying to infer something about the state of Linux gaming from this single statistic is just kinda silly.

I did directly compare it to another closed plattform store, which is Xbox Live Arcade. When a very successfull game sold 77 copies in a year when the same game sold 1 million copies (on xbox alone) in a timeframe of similar length (0.0077%) that still says something. I am very certain that SMB still sells alot more than 77 copies on XBLA per day!

Of course you cant compare the Ubuntu Store with something like XBLA but still, its helps bringing stuff into perspective.

Anyone who got it in the Humble Bundle got a copy in the Ubuntu Software Center too.

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