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[Mario]

I am surprised to hear that it became harder to make money from Live Arcade around the same time. Perhaps because of the retail market picking up?

Less to do with the retail side, more to do with MS changing policy and terms.

 

[StuBurns]

Doesn't seem like a productive way to do business to me. They should be providing a framework for game creators to come to Microsoft and make games. If I make a game, it's my job to get it out there, get deals, secure platforms.

It's Blow's job to get the game on many platforms, and he is the reason why Witness isn't coming to the new XBOX (for now)- not Microsoft.

If you make a game, sure, because I'm guessing you didn't make the most critically acclaimed game on XBLA. Blow is high profile, he's making a high profile game, and he has a history with the MS audience. The Witness should have debuted on XB3, and MS should have made sure of it.

And the reason it's not on XB3 right now is because MS hasn't told him about the system. How is that his fault? Is he meant to break into Epic and steal a dev kit?

 

[Kenshin001]

I don't think so, he hasn't even updated it actually:


It did say 2012 at one point, but that's been there as long as the blog if I remember correctly.

But it's irrelevant. If anyone at Sony could convince him, obviously MS could too.

You have to go back further, 2011.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-27-console-port-of-the-witness-not-worth-it

"We like 360 and PS3, but their specifications are over five years old now, and that's a lot in computer years," he said.

"The kind of tricks we'd have to perform to get this game working on those platforms are such a lot of work that to port it over at this point is just not worth it for us."

That was taken from the Edge interview where he was talking about self publishing the game on Steam and iOS. He seems pretty keen on the idea of self publishing.

 

[StuBurns]

You have to go back further, 2011.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-27-console-port-of-the-witness-not-worth-it


That was taken from the Edge interview where he was talking about self publishing the game on Steam and iOS. He seems pretty keen on the idea of self publishing.

He isn't putting it on PS3 or 360 though. Nothing changed. They're too shit. He said it again the other day.

 

[ionicbluebird]

I dunno why, cos he made a packet out of Braid: -


http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/the-most-dangerous-gamer/308928/

That is one great article.

 

[Kenshin001]

So Polytron retweeted Sony guy Nick Suttner's tweet about developing on PSN. Interesting.

 

[Miles Quaritch]

Less to do with the retail side, more to do with MS changing policy and terms.

If there's one thing that's all but assured, it's Microsoft making a stupid decision that has a long lasting negative impact.

 

[ionicbluebird]

I'd very much like to see something like XBLIG or the iOS app store on PS4.

 

[Effect]

The only Nintendo developers that have had troubles getting approved as Nintendo developers recently were the Inchworm Animation developers, and even they've gotten approved.

I wonder why they got denied initially.

Apart from the 2,800+ indie games on Xbox Live right now, yeah.

Jonathan Blow seems pissed off that he's not allowed to charge a high enough price for The Witness on XBLA: -


http://penny-arcade.com/report/edit...athan-blow-explains-why-microsoft-is-aiming-a

That does suck that Microsoft is so controlling about the prices. One of the great things about these various indie developers is that it seems like it could be a good way to return to mid-tier games after various bigger studios have tried to wipe them out by constantly spending as much money as they can in order to be the biggest and shiniest object in the room. In fact this could be why Microsoft has tried to control the price the way they have. Can't have actual good non-blockbuster "AAA" titles coming out at a reasonable price. A higher price would naturally be seen to some as that the game is more substantial and possibly more worthy of a purchase. People might be willing to buy those instead of the big advertised AAA title that just had several million dollars in advertising dropped on it. Can't have that. Sony and Nintendo seem okay with that and possibly as a way to make up for whatever third party publisher deficit they might have or in Nintendo's case does have.

 

[lunchwithyuzo]

Considering Sony is actively passing MS in install-base, its really not that far-fetched to believe Sony has more consoles connected, especially when the service is free.

Going by the last known numbers PS3 does have a higher connection rate than 360 (70% to 60%), but Wii U actually has the highest connection rate of any console (74%), and 3DS has an even higher connection rate than that (80%).

 

[AranhaHunter]

I hope so for the developers sake. Sales data that people have shared is grim.

Care to share or hint at any numbers for psm games sales? You can PM me if you want

 

[serplux]

I wonder why they got denied initially.

They said on their website that they weren't really sure, but they thought it might have been because their company might not have been big enough to have an established credit rating. Which makes no sense to me, because quite a few other developers have become Wii U/3DS developers with the same (or lesser) amount of people. It's a bit confusing, especially since Inchworm Animation sold pretty well.

 

[kassatsu]

Care to share or hint at any numbers for psm games sales? You can PM me if you want

The sixty second shooter deluxe guy has made ~$2000 since launch in late october. That is roughly 600 games sold and it was one of the higher profiles games that was featured on the PSBlog.

 

[Mifune]

Live Arcade was a legitimate platform long before Braid was released. You're free to disagree, but it's disingenuous to claim it lacked legitimacy as a platform before Braid.

Did it have change the perception of Live Arcade for Indie developers? It could be argued it did, but that's an entirely different argument.

I said "helped."

 

[Exterminieren]

It seems weird to me that Microsoft is shaping up to be by far the worst company for indies to deal with.

For Christ's sake, if Nintendo are shaping up to be better at handling indie devs than you are, it's time to sort shit out.

 

[Killthee]

Saw Shane tweet out a link to their developer registration site. Love their little intro:

Why PlayStation?

With the ability to self-publish across PlayStation Network, PS® Vita, and PlayStation Mobile there’s a PlayStation platform for every game. No slotting, no voting. You are the publisher!

 

[antonz]

Articles a mess. Blow even at the PS4 event specifically mentioned the title was a timed exclusive and afterwards he suggested it would show up elsewhere. As nice as what Blow makes its not something Microsoft is going to come beating down the door for.

It seems weird to me that Microsoft is shaping up to be by far the worst company for indies to deal with.

For Christ's sake, if Nintendo are shaping up to be better at handling indie devs than you are, it's time to sort shit out.

Microsoft was far too interested in the money side of things with Live. It didn't matter if its a 3 man team they were gonna pay what a 200 man team would pay.

 

[INTERNET]

So Polytron retweeted Sony guy Nick Suttner's tweet about developing on PSN. Interesting.

Speaking of interesting, I think I also saw Chris Hecker (Spy Party) casually tweet about being in NYC last week...

 

[erawsd]

They are definitely on the right track. I wonder how Sony will handle devkits though.

 

[Heart of Black]

Speaking of interesting, I think I also saw Chris Hecker (Spy Party) casually tweet about being in NYC last week...

Yeah he was here at the PS event and at the awesome Sony dev relations party afterward.

 

[watership]

It's almost if Microsoft announced how its going to deal with Indies games. Oh wait, they didn't. Does everyone honestly think there will be the same policies next Gen? Most of them were completely different from Xbox to 360, why not another change? Can only Sony learn from its mistakes, not Microsoft?

 

[AlexM]

PS Mobile is an example of the game quality you get when you open things up.

I mean, I hate to pick on this guy, since he's nice enough to release tutorials. But look at the screens of his upcoming game

http://levelism.com/nekorush-update-new-screens/

Uh, yeah, a running game based around poorly drawn cats. Is there really a large market for games like this? There is certainly room for a better made running game, with a nice feature set (see Jetpack Joyride). But the basic Canabalt premise has been done over and over. Canabalt with penguins was just released last week. Now canabalt with cats.

And that's far from the worst of what has been released on it. By contrast, what good games have been released on it? Maybe a handful. Terrortown and maybe Pixel (once the update comes out) are the only really outstanding games, IMHO. Super Skull Smash Go! really could have been an excellent game, but it was only about halfway done. That's the other thing, it seems like it encourages people to flood the market with half finished games, rather than focus on quality.

I should point out the reason I started with a smaller scope project like that is the following:

-Writing my own engine for future games. That's consuming a lot of time. In the past I've used engines or helper libraries like XNA.
-This game can be considered somewhat of a test for that engine and the whole PSM submission process. All my games previously have been mods or free games where I haven't had to worry about things like having a business bank account or company.
-After the game is submitted the idea is to release the engine for people to use freely
-The PSM SDKitself has been rapidly evolving and has had it's issues (threading, performance, missing features etc). It's been stabilizing a lot as of late.

I do have other stuff I'm working on that's more complex in scope but it's really an issue of if I took on a really complex project with all these unknowns then I would probably fail and burn out. I'd rather get a stable base, get to know the hardware, SDK and the business side of things. After that I can start to focus on more complex games.

I would love to talk about the next project but it's in far too much of a stage of infancy.

 

[Sintoid]

Sony posted this link on twitter yesterday...

How to be a SCE Developer

Seems to be easier than before...