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According to Feral Interactive on Twitter in reply to my question, it seems Linux gamers will not be getting F1 2016, due to low sales of the previous title.
The just announced a release date for the Mac version of F1 2016, so I had to ask the obvious question:
@gamingonlinux F1 2016 isn't coming to Linux. Sales of F1 2015 weren't strong enough to support a port of 2016. Penguin racers do have DiRT Rally though!
— Feral Interactive (@feralgames) April 3, 2017
It's a shame, but the F1 games on PC don't seem all that popular. Going by Steam, F1 2015 has less than one thousand reviews and F1 2014 has even less again. Even the latest title has less than two thousand reviews. Comparatively, DiRT Rally, which we do have, has thousands more reviews and going by SteamSpy, vastly more sales too.
F1 2016 has so far seen a much nicer reception with users and critics, so it's a real shame we won't see it due to lower sales from a, quite frankly, inferior game. The previous game had bad AI, no proper career mode and other issues.
What do you think to this news?
UltraAltesBrot Apr 3, 2017
Last edited by UltraAltesBrot on 3 April 2017 at 11:05 am UTC
Secondly, I don't like Formula One (and "realistic" racing games in general), so I have no stake in this, beyond wanting to see as many games on linux as possible.
Finally: Why did this happen? Why wasn't this a financial success?
Is there some kind of correlation between liking linux and liking F1 sims? Seems unlikely.
Is the linux user base too small for a niche game like this? Possible.
What's also possible is that the port was simply released too late - according to the steam news on this, the port was released in May 2016, almost a year after the windows release and literally a day before the sequel announcement. With a year in the title, that doesn't sound great.
Combine that with an apparent lukewarm reception (going by the metacritic score and steam reviews), that seems to explain it.
Would this be better for F1 2016? Considering that the projected Mac release isn't much closer to the windows release (8 months vs 10 months), it might very well not be.
Last edited by hirnbrot on 3 April 2017 at 11:19 am UTC
Quoting: UltraAltesBrotThat means other Feral ports seem to have been a financial success.. which is good i guess?
How many of them had a sequel ported to prove?
Quoting: EikeQuoting: UltraAltesBrotThat means other Feral ports seem to have been a financial success.. which is good i guess?
How many of them had a sequel ported to prove?
Total War series
What's a bit frightening though is that obviously doing a Mac port now seems not to reduce the cost of a Linux port drastically anymore. Probably due to Metal.
And ofc that their radar is an Apple device atm! :-(
Quoting: EikeQuoting: UltraAltesBrotThat means other Feral ports seem to have been a financial success.. which is good i guess?
How many of them had a sequel ported to prove?
X-Com series.
rustybroomhandle Apr 3, 2017
Quoting: LeopardQuoting: EikeQuoting: UltraAltesBrotThat means other Feral ports seem to have been a financial success.. which is good i guess?
How many of them had a sequel ported to prove?
Total War series
And XCOM
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