Tag Archives: blocks that matter
Indie darling Blocks That Matter sells 200K units, mostly on computers
Since its initial release in May 2011, Swing Swing Submarine’s critically-acclaimed indie title Blocks that Matter has seen some real ups and downs in terms of sales. It had a slow start when it launched as an Xbox Live Indie Game, but things have turned around since its PC, Mac, and Linux debut in August.
In a new info-graphic posted on the game’s website, Swing Swing Submarine revealed that Blocks That Matter has now sold more than 200,000 units, with the vast majority of these sales on home computers — in fact, the chart indicates that Xbox 360 made up only a small fraction of the overall sales.
In all, the game has pulled in more than $250,000 in revenue, and once again PC, Mac, and Linux made up the majority of this sum (though the game earned an additional $40,000 when it won the Dream.Build.Play competition in August).
The game’s strong sales on home computers were almost certainly bolstered when Blocks That Matter was featured in the Humble Bundle’s “Humble Voxatron Debut,” which sold 172,269 bundles and pulled in nearly $1 million across its numerous games and charities.
Despite the game’s success on PC, Mac, and Linux, XBLIG sales have remained relatively low. These results fall in line with reports from a number of other indie developers, who have struggled to move units on the XBLIG platform.
Microsoft tried to address this problem last week, however, when it gave the Indie Games marketplace a prominent shortcut on the Xbox 360 dashboard.
Upcoming Linux Game ‘Blocks That Matter’ Wins $ 40,000 in Dream.Build.Play 2011 Competition
Innovative Linux Game Blocks That Matter about which we have written plenty of times has won Microsoft’s Dream.Build.Play 2011 competition with grand prize of $ 40,000.
About Dream.Build.Play 2011
Dream.Build.Play is an annual contest organized by Microsoft where Games developed for Microsoft’s XNA Studio 4.0 or XBOX 360 compete with each other for Grand Prize.
Tough Competition
Blocks That Matter was selected from a pool of more than 250 entrants from 27 countries.
Linux Friendly Developers
The game developers have been really friendly to the Linux community and has already released couple of tech demos for the Linux users for user feedback and testing. Once all the remaining issues and bugs are ironed out the game will be released. Lead developer Guillaume also said that they have not forgotten Linux users at all and will release it most probably in this week only, its just that they have too many things on their hands now and little time.
Though the competition awards games made for XBOX or Windows platforms, it does not really matter here as this really gives the developers their due recognition, fame and money too.
Many Congratulations to the developers !!!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlZry5NpYCY&w=460&h=288]
On a Side Note: Are there any such gaming competitions or events exclusively for Linux games? As far as I know, there isn’t one. If you know about such a contest, please let me know in comments section.
