During his keynote presentation at the Develop Conference in Brighton this morning, PS4 chief architect Mark Cerny predicted a "renaissance of gaming", fuelled by indie titles, that will echo the early years of PlayStation.
"With PSone there was no way to make an indie title," he said. "The hardware didn't support digital downloads and all games were distributed on CD-ROMS. There was no way for creators to directly reach their audience.
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"With the release of PlayStation 4, we understand we have an opportunity to fundamentally alter the landscape of gaming," Cerny continued.
"On PS4, I believe the indie paradigm will have the hardware as enabler, not as the central player, which is to say that Octodad isn't about the triangle count, it's about keeping your cephalopod nature a secret from your human family."
"On the business side, we've had a bit of an epiphany," Cerny said. "Since Adam Boyes joined SCE, pretty much the whole process has been overturned. He wanted us to look at the day in the life of an indie developer, and challenged us to explain whether our processes were helping or hindering the creation of the diverse titles we were looking for.
"We ended up radically simplifying concept approval. We fully support self-publishing across all platforms, so it's now possible for developers to maintain complete creative and financial control. We now pretty much support any business model, whether it be buy-to-play, free-to-play, episodic or micro-transactions. And we're doing what we can to support indie development financially as well, whether that be through loaner dev kits or our incubation program or direct support from the Pub Fund.
"We also understand that accessibility is paramount. So we've gone from putting our process out front to putting people out front, which is to say your indie journey on PS4 as a developer begins by tweeting Shahid Ahmad, not by filling out a form."
