Re: Business models

[Jan Ekholm <chakie@infa.abo.fi>]

On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, Mark Collins wrote:

>How do you guys think people should go about selling Linux games?
>
>I've had a couple of ideas, as follows....
>
>1) Online distrobution: Sell the games online. Games should be quite small
>and low cost (say, $5-$10 a pop).

I prefer this option. It makes it easier to buy, faster and probably less
hassle, as long as the credit card handling is secure.

If I'd be able to choose I'd like to be able to download part of the full
game to test it out before buying. I don't want to have to pay for
something that maybe doesn't run on my machine, runs poorly, or isn't what
I wanted (this goes for all software I buy, of course).

>2) Compilation CDs: Sell lots of games on CD. This could work with
>OpenSource games as well as closed source games.

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the percentage of games on the CD that I
really want. I don't want to pay a lot for games that I don't want. CD:s
are also slooow to get from wherever they're shipped from (usually far
away in the middle of nowhere), as they would most likely not be found in
any ordinary shop "around the corner".

No, I'm not pessimistic about Linux games, it's just that nobody just
makes games I want to buy and play, makes them work well and
easily available. I *do* have one commercial Linux game, which is exactly
as many commercial DOS games as I have, although I haven't played either
for over a year (they don't work)... :-)

Hmm, this ended up into being more a <rant> thingie than constructive.

--------------------+--------------------------------------------------------
Jan 'Chakie' Ekholm |     Balrog New Media    http://www.balrog.fi/
   Linux Inside     | I'm the blue screen of death, nobody hears your screams


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