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[Chaser324]

MS requires developers pay a fee to publish ID@ games?

Since when? That's a pretty stupid change, wasn't it free before?

When I was considering submitting earlier this year, I couldn't figure out how to do it without getting a publisher ID, which requires a payment. Looking at the application now (which has been revised since that time), it seems like that may no longer be the case. It may have not been the case at that time either, but something gave me the impression that it was a requirement.

Based on the current FAQ, there is no fee required unless you want to publish with the Universal Windows Platform. http://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers/ID

What will it cost me?
There are no fees to apply to ID@Xbox, to submit a game to certification, publish, or update your games. There is a very modest one-time cost associated with development for the Universal Windows Platform.

 

[tylerh1701]

Great stuff. Truly interesting.

Bit of cleaning up on the PS4 side since it's the one I'm familiar with:

Resogun Defenders (February) is DLC, not a full game.
Element4l (April) isn't on PS4, only Vita.
I don't think Space Hulk: Deathwing (Sept.) or Shift Happens (Sept.) are on PS4 yet. Not in North America, anyway. Not sure on other regions.

 

[Montresor]

God what a fucking incredible thread, chubigans. Great job man. Absolutely no bullshit - wonderful, pure, fact-based and number-driven post. My only issue is with your "Xbox community is something else" comment - there are shitheels throughout the internet.

As an XB1 player here's hoping you release on XB1 eventually.

I think with the sales gap you will continue to see more indies on PS4 than XB1. But I just want to hear once and for all that the gap is ONLY due to PS4's lead in sales, and NEVER because of any MS policies or attitude. Hopefully we get to that point sometime in this gen, and hopefully the suits at MS look long and hard at what Sony has done when the next generation begins.

 

[Jacksinthe]

Uh? How is the bolded an excuse? Did you read the rest of my post?

Yup. Your line about people using this as ammo for a console war had nothing to do with the current situation and everything to do with conversational tactics. I gave you a reason why people bring this up.

Hint:

Spoiler

its not console wars

.

 

[hawk2025]

Uh? How is the bolded an excuse? Did you read the rest of my post?

It is the very definition of excuse.

You are coming up with a made-up ulterior motive to explain why people feel differently than you, which in turn shifts or diminishes the fault.

An excuse, if you will.

 

[driver116]

Pretty sure Microsoft were on the indie train before Sony. Starting with allowing people to develop and publish on their system with games such as Super Meat Boy, Braid and Fez. Even to much smaller indie developers with the indie marketplace on the 360...which obviously led to complete crap being put on there. Combined with being able to giving people development tools such as XNA. PS3 didn't have any of this other than the big indies(oxymoron)?

You obviously never had a PS1 - there were tons of demo disks with indie games on.

 

[tylerh1701]

This is one of the ps4 games listed - kitten squad. Not sure if quality is much of a concern when making lists like those in the op. It's just pure numbers which backwards compatibility will most likely provide.

I'd be interested to know how many of those games on the lists are vita/ps3 ports.

That looks like Bombing Busters. It's definitely not Kitten Squad.

 

[btrboyev]

I miss last gen where Xbox live at new games every Tuesday and they let you demo every song one of them. Why they went backwards on this is beyond stupid.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Sony was on the indie train going all the way back to the PSone

Remember a PSone puzzle game named Devil Dice? That was originally created in Net Yaroze.

PS2 Linux was even bigger. It had less of a mystical/magical aura to it, that Yaroze kit and manuals looks cool indeed, but you had tons of documentation and full level access to most of the hardware (IOP and SPU2 where the only relatively important ones locked off). Full CPU (main RISC core, scratchpad RAM, VU's, DMA controller, GIF, etc...) and GPU access, and incredible community support in the official PS2 Linux forums. We had some tools that got there before they did on the official channel . As a rule of thumb, if you restricted yourself to 16 MB of main RAM or so, you had full DevKit performance and experience (virtual to physical memory mapping juggling for DMA chains aside... but then even real developers worried about it for performance reasons).

 

[SEGAvangelist]

I miss last gen where Xbox live at new games every Tuesday and they let you demo every song one of them. Why they went backwards on this is beyond stupid.

I imagine they would get far less games on their console by requiring a demo for every ID@Xbox game. That's extra work for indie developers.

 

[Neuromancer]

One dev contacted me and lamented that his/her big PS4/Steam/XB1 game announcement was marred by a lot of the Xbox community spouting vitriol and hate towards them, and how he/she wished that they didn't announce for the XB1 at all. Now, I'm not about to pretend that the PS4 or even Steam communities are even remotely free from anything like that, but the Xbox community really is something else. I even heard from them when I announced my game for PS4/Steam only...not so much because they wanted to know why my game wasn't announced for XB1, but to let me know my game wasn't welcomed on their platform. Fun stuff.

Sad. All I can do is shake my head and sigh.

 

[watership]

I miss last gen where Xbox live at new games every Tuesday and they let you demo every song one of them. Why they went backwards on this is beyond stupid.

That was great for gamers but bad for Developers. Dev's hated that they had to create a demo for their game. Extra resources and time they didn't have, especially the same teams. It worked out great if your game was easily understood in a demo, but some games demo'd poorly. Turns out that having a demo for every game statistically hurt sales, so that's why it's practically nowhere this gen. Also the advent of game streaming means you don't have to go into a game blind anymore.

 

[SplitYourInfinities]

Yup. Your line about people using this as ammo for a console war had nothing to do with the current situation and everything to do with conversational tactics. I gave you a reason why people bring this up.

Hint:

Spoiler

its not console wars

.

Sorry, but i'm not excusing anyone here nor playing the matter down. I'm just saying how i feel that sometimes some people doesn't really care about the indie landscape in the console market and just trivializes this subject for other purposes. That doesn't have to include you, the OP, or someone in particular. And of course there is people who care about this matter for real, especially indie developers like you.

 

[hawk2025]

Sorry, but i'm not excusing anyone here nor playing the matter down. I'm just saying how i feel that sometimes some people doesn't really care about the indie landscape in the console market and just trivializes this subject for other purposes. That doesn't have to include you, the OP, or someone in particular. And of course there is people who care about this matter for real, especially indie developers like you.

So, how should we go about differentiating between those two sets of people, and what did that remark add to the discussion?

 

[walltowall]

I miss last gen where Xbox live at new games every Tuesday and they let you demo every song one of them. Why they went backwards on this is beyond stupid.

Funny thing is, the no demo change was meant to be more developer friendly.

 

[Saucycarpdog]

This why, even if I do end up buying one of the consoles, I'll always keep my PC. Having a PC basically guarantees that you never miss out on the vast swath of amazing indies out there. (And in many cases you get indies games that never reach the consoles)

 

[thelastword]

I think my biggest take from all of this is that "Sony makes indies feel important", pretty much every show, they have an indies section, they actually bring indies on stage to demo their games and make them feel special. It's pretty much public knowledge too how pro indies, pro any developer....Sony was and has been from the start of this generation and Sony's Shahid Ahmad has been doing some solid work as the one in charge of indies.

I think there's a solid presence for each type of game you will find on the PS4, there is even a guy who is responsible for ports like USF4 making it to the PS4 and games like Yakuza, BOF and other games making it to the PS platforms or in some cases localization to Sony platforms (Gio Corsi). Obviously, SWWS is known by all, but pretty much all game types, you know who's responsible and where you can get info, they're pretty forthcoming with the community on twitter and in many other ways....I think their presence is more significant than the community and marketing guys at MS.

It's sad that the XB1 community would send so much vitriol your way because you did not make an announcement for their platform. It's similar to the attitude MS had towards indies early on this generation.

 

[chubigans]

Great stuff. Truly interesting.

Bit of cleaning up on the PS4 side since it's the one I'm familiar with:

Resogun Defenders (February) is DLC, not a full game.
Element4l (April) isn't on PS4, only Vita.
I don't think Space Hulk: Deathwing (Sept.) or Shift Happens (Sept.) are on PS4 yet. Not in North America, anyway. Not sure on other regions.

Ah thanks, I thought Resogun Defenders was a stand alone addition. Will change these.

 

[Aceofspades]

This thread make every "PS4 has no games" or "Xbox has more exclusives" comments very funny.

 

[Fdkn]

This thread make every "PS4 has no games" or "Xbox has more exclusives" comments very funny.

the premise of those comments is that only western AAA games (that they care about) count so they are really as funny (or sad) as ever

 

[The 8-Bit Raider]

This thread make every "PS4 has no games" or "Xbox has more exclusives" comments very funny.

Tell me about it. I currently have 89 games on my PS4...not counting F2P titles.

Edit: Make that 92, I forgot to add October's PS Plus titles.

 

[Aceofspades]

the premise of those comments is that only western AAA games (that they care about) count so they are really as funny (or sad) as ever

Problem is even if you exclude indies from exclusive lists PS4 would still come on top regarding the number of games released on it.

 

[Gren]

Glad that the clause is finally dead, or at least rendered practically impotent.

Those comments from the "first class citizens" are disappointing, but all platforms have their own peanut galleries.

 

[watdaeff4]

Interesting OP and responses

 

[cantona222]

Great analysis my friend.

 

[BumblebeeCody]

Eh. A lot of smaller devs were very unhappy with MS and XBLA last gen (see Team Meat, Jonathan Blow, etc), and as a result pretty much said that they're done with MS entirely. While XBLA certainly paved the way for digital releases on consoles, MS were kind of dicks about the whole thing.

Yeah I heard the horror stories. But I didn't ever say they were perfect, only that they were the only one of the three to let indies get a big break out. Like I said, any random noobs can publish anything on 360 now since the indie marketplace opened.

You obviously never had a PS1 - there were tons of demo disks with indie games on.

Grew up on PS1.

I miss last gen where Xbox live at new games every Tuesday and they let you demo every song one of them. Why they went backwards on this is beyond stupid.

Make way for betas, prologues, trials and exclusive betas.

Glad that the clause is finally dead, or at least rendered practically impotent.

Was stupid to begin with.

 

[awesomegamername]

Great op chubigans!

I'm probably completely wrong but here are my thoughts.

As with everything X1 related, Microsoft screwed up their indie relations before/at launch and for a little while after. Then, once they realized that indies actually are important and a selling point, they started really working with them and trying to woo them over. The problem is, it takes time to make games. Even if Microsoft turned the situation around and started working better with indies, there were still deals already made with Sony and studios with projects in the works that didn't include the X1. Because of that, we still haven't seen the X1 catch up on the indie front.

There is still a upward momentum though in X1's favor. More and more indies are releasing on the console and it seems like Microsoft is truly interested in promoting indies. Be that as we may, I don't see the indie cap significantly closing until the end of next year/beginning of 2017.

 

[justsomeguy]

Based on the current FAQ, there is no fee required unless you want to publish with the Universal Windows Platform. http://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers/ID

I think that's just a general normal store publishing fee same as you'd get on apples store or (presumably) android store. Not specific to id@xbox, an app dev would pay the same. If I'm right it's $99 at the point you actually want to push something into the store. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/jj863494.aspx

 

[justsomeguy]

God what a fucking incredible thread, chubigans. Great job man. Absolutely no bullshit - wonderful, pure, fact-based and number-driven post. My only issue is with your "Xbox community is something else" comment - there are shitheels throughout the internet.

As an XB1 player here's hoping you release on XB1 eventually.

I think with the sales gap you will continue to see more indies on PS4 than XB1. But I just want to hear once and for all that the gap is ONLY due to PS4's lead in sales, and NEVER because of any MS policies or attitude. Hopefully we get to that point sometime in this gen, and hopefully the suits at MS look long and hard at what Sony has done when the next generation begins.

Fantastic post, says everything I want to say, all of it. Chubs these are fantastic threads, thank you so much for making them.

 

[justsomeguy]

One interesting thing for me on xb1 & pc universal app vs. Ps4 & pc... Question to the devs on this thread - how interesting is that in real terms? My perception is that the majority of indies use Unity. If that's the case, you can get binaries for all platforms trivially from that tool (correct me if I'm wrong!). But the universal app model has advantages such as presence in the windows store, single binary for console, phone and pc which help keep maintenance costs and deployment complexity down, cross platform play, cross-platform IAP, etc. all of which sound hugely alluring. Interested in your thoughts! (excuse lack of paragraphs... Running a beta browser with a bug ). Edit: Also unity can spit out universal apps I believe just to confuse matters

 

[TBiddy]

There is still a upward momentum though in X1's favor. More and more indies are releasing on the console and it seems like Microsoft is truly interested in promoting indies. Be that as we may, I don't see the indie cap significantly closing until the end of next year/beginning of 2017.

I don't think we'll ever see the gap closed, as such. There's like 10 million PS4s more out there, than there's XB1s. Or more, even, I haven't seen updates numbers in a while.

If you're a small studio with limited ressources, you're gonna focus on PC and PS4, since that's where the audience is. I doubt it has much to do with the parity clause (although it's probably a factor in some cases), but a matter of focusing on the platforms with the highest chance of succes.

 

[Shining Sunshine]

Isn't Blood Bowl II also on PS4?

I just remember seeing it in the store.

 

[Yjynx]

As far as I can tell, the XB1 is basically losing by 1 (Rocket League).

Everything else is digital indie cannon fodder that no reasonable person would miss. This is just "is console x better than console y? #clickbait."

Look at those lists, one of them is bigger!

There really is a lot of crap on both consoles that are just clogging the system. I'm not fanboy but I would honestly say that PS4 has a lot more "crap" on it than the Xbox One does. If that's a plus, then so be it.

A year later and I still do not get the fuss. As a XB1 owner I have no issues with MS requiring additional content if your game is going to be released months later at the same price. You want that extra money XB1 users can potentially provide? Then release your game the time as your PS4 release.

Giantbomb guys kinda addressed this in last weeks podcast, but to sorta summarize my fellings on this matter......I dont care. I really dont care about the amount of digital titles coming to these consoles as I dont play 99% of them and they dont look interesting to me in the least. They dont sell consoles and outside of the guys sitting on forums like us, a large majourity of these games will go completely unnoticed by the mass public because shoving 10 games on your service a week means nothing gets the spotlight.

Well I'm quite amazed really. I honestly thought no way people going to post this kind of shit. One at most for the entire thread....


Im 100% sure now that ms itself create this kind of mindset for their xbox communities. More dev should realize this,they thought your game worth nothing. So whats the point? Just skip it all together and release it at other place - that should teach them.



Edit: indie games then japanese games then anything outside AAA, finally anything other than ms AAA-aaaaa games, last punch anything other than Halo and Gears

 

[TBiddy]

Im 100% sure now that ms itself create this kind of mindset for their xbox communities. More dev should realize this,they thought your game worth nothing. So whats the point? Just skip it all together and release it at other place - that should teach them.

So because 6 people on NeoGaf thinks that most games (indie or not) released on both platforms and/or XB1 are "shit" (to use their words), all indie-devs should skip releasing on XB1?

What about those who like indie games?

Edit: indie games then japanese games then anything outside AAA, finally anything other than ms AAA-aaaaa games, last punch anything other than Halo and Gears

I don't even know what this means.

 

[justsomeguy]

Im 100% sure now that ms itself create this kind of mindset for their xbox communities.

You generalising those people as speaking for the whole community is almost as offensive to me (a member of that community) as their posts are. It's just as bad as saying "Neogaf is Sony biased" - it's not one entity, it's a collection of individuals with individual views.

 

[Tapejara]

Chub, your comment about how the Xbox community is receptive to indies is interesting, because I've actually seen similar opinions from commentors on the PlayStation Blog. For the longest time any indie game would get bashed in the comment section, with similar phrases being used; "I didn't buy a $400 console to play Atari 2600 games!" A particularly egregious example was how angry people were about Nidhogg.

In any case, reception to indies has gotten much better over the past couple of months, and obviously most of these games were selling well in the first place, otherwise I doubt so many devs would have put up with it. Hopefully those vocal Xbox fans will come around.

 

[keidashxd]

Reading most of the info here my conclusion is simple, now being an Xbox/ps4 indie developer is more or less easy on both sides, but there's a market gap and a cost for developing for more systems. Some developers think about bringing to Xbox One and others prefer to start a new development instead.

In a near future if One has a larger base maybe things get more balances, but now there's a big gap and it's lógica the focus on ps4 development.

 

[Gren]

Chub, your comment about how the Xbox community is receptive to indies is interesting, because I've actually seen similar opinions from commentors on the PlayStation Blog. For the longest time any indie game would get bashed in the comment section, with similar phrases being used; "I didn't buy a $400 console to play Atari 2600 games!" A particularly egregious example was how angry people were about Nidhogg.

This is exactly what came to my mind as well. I also recall most every other IGC schedule post attracting such comments as well. In those cases, you could say they're just customers voicing their displeasure with a service they're paying for, but it still shows that community has some closed-minded members just like any other.

 

[Jacksinthe]

One interesting thing for me on xb1 & pc universal app vs. Ps4 & pc... Question to the devs on this thread - how interesting is that in real terms? My perception is that the majority of indies use Unity. If that's the case, you can get binaries for all platforms trivially from that tool (correct me if I'm wrong!). But the universal app model has advantages such as presence in the windows store, single binary for console, phone and pc which help keep maintenance costs and deployment complexity down, cross platform play, cross-platform IAP, etc. all of which sound hugely alluring. Interested in your thoughts! (excuse lack of paragraphs... Running a beta browser with a bug ). Edit: Also unity can spit out universal apps I believe just to confuse matters

Universal is one thing. Its another dealing with multiple platforms. We use Unity and have to

Keep track of multiple input sources per platform
Keep track of network IDs per platform
Access storage media differently per platform
Netcode - goes without saying
Platform networks (Steam, PSN, XBL) - all different for achievements
Controller inputs
Save systems
Cloud storage
Etc

There's a ton of shit to keep track of that are all different which makes the whole "code once, play anywhere" design moot. I even wrote my own wiki to use as a roadmap for my code to save my sanity because of multiple version tracking. Then there's platform specific bugs. Yikes.

Being the only programmer sucks for multiple platforms. Lots of stress to deal with and if you are doing this as a second job - a lot of external factors come into play when making a decision to drop a platform, if needed.

Sales of hardware, software sales for similar titles, general reception between platform demographics that talk about your game, etc. Sometimes the extra effort might not be worth whatever payoff may exist to blunt your own well being.

Lots to consider and if any of you read the indie thread you'll know I've been feeling it lately.

 

[justsomeguy]

There's a ton of shit to keep track of that are all different which makes the whole "code once, play anywhere" design moot. I even wrote my own wiki to use as a roadmap for my code to save my sanity because of multiple version tracking. Then there's platform specific bugs. Yikes.

Right, echoes a lot of what I thought: there's a lot of "platform specific" stuff in there in any case.

However if you're doing an id@xbox universal app, does it remove a lot of that PC/XBox divide, letting you treat them truly as a single platform (or so very close to it that it is more or less one platform)? i.e. in unity instead of having a bunch of (pseudocode)

#if XBOX
#elseif PC
#elseif PS4

you instead can simplify to:
#if UniversalApp
#elseif PS4

May be too early in the universal app dev lifecycle to know for sure, I guess.

 

[SolarMystic]

Great write up! Having just purchased my Ps4 after only having one for a few months after launch, I am catching up on a lot of indies. My plus account was still active so I've racked up quite the backlog over the past months.

 

[Jacksinthe]

Right, echoes a lot of what I thought: there's a lot of "platform specific" stuff in there in any case.

However if you're doing an id@xbox universal app, does it remove a lot of that PC/XBox divide, letting you treat them truly as a single platform (or so very close to it that it is more or less one platform)? i.e. in unity instead of having a bunch of (pseudocode)

#if XBOX
#elseif PC
#elseif PS4

you instead can simplify to:
#if UniversalApp
#elseif PS4

May be too early in the universal app dev lifecycle to know for sure, I guess.

You need to call platform specific systems. Even if you use switches or if statements, that code is still compiled - meaning, you can't compile with those lines of code in from one platform to the next because the compiler still looks at it and wonders why, even if you never use it, you are calling PS4 systems for an Xbox version - throwing errors and not compiling. They need to be removed or commented out.

This is why we use version control. But now you have 3 different versions of your game you need to constantly merge and fork only specific changes for multiple builds. It doesn't work like you think.

 

[OneUh8]

There are way too many games to play on both consoles. I dunno how anyone can keep up.

 

[SpotAnime]

As a long time Xbox owner and only having an Xbox One this generation, I can absolutely say indies are not getting the same attention as they did with the Xbox 360, let alone this gen against the PS4. PS4 is getting more indie exclusives, and Sony is promoting them much better, than Microsoft is currently. The PS Blog really focuses on indies with guest developer posts, and emphasizes new releases by consistently releasing every Tuesday. Microsoft really has no similar showcase, and indies get released seemingly randomly throughout the week with little or no fanfare. In many cases where there is indie parity, I know about the release through the PS Blog rather than from Microsoft. Sometimes it even seems like it's a Sony exclusive because of how it's promoted when it's not.

So, that.

 

[Melchiah]

This thread is like beating a dead horse. PS4 gets most of indie games first for three main reasons: MS abusive policies, install base and mindshare. The first one can be corrected, the other two not so much. The efforts that the ID@Xbox team have to put to bring a game first to their platform are huge, meanwhile a lot of indies are lining up to publish their games on a Playstation platform because Sony has provided a friendly environment for them since day one. At this point there is no way for MS to reverse this situation.

Anyways, last gen was the other way around and people weren't half as concerned. I think that a lot of people use this subject as a bullet point in console wars, which is a shame.

Microsoft had a parity clause last gen as well, and it worked for their advantage back then due to the larger userbase.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-24-why-microsoft-wont-publish-psn-firsts

Microsoft's Content Submission and Release Policy, seen by Eurogamer, details its third-party publisher guidelines.

"Titles for Xbox 360 must ship at least simultaneously with other video game platform, and must have at least feature and content parity on-disc with the other video game platform versions in all regions where the title is available," it reads.

"If these conditions are not met, Microsoft reserves the right to not allow the content to be released on Xbox 360."

...

Not all agree, however. One representative from a publisher who wished to remain anonymous told Eurogamer Microsoft's policy blocks developers from taking advantage of other platforms' strengths.

"Microsoft is suggesting that anything but parity will result in them not carrying a title. They may think this is competitive, but it's not. They are killing any creative exposure of titles to make up for their own platform's shortcomings."

It bothered me, as I had to wait ages to be able play Limbo and Braid on the PS3, and I do remember that those kind of games were used as bullet points back then as well.

 

[Bits N Pieces]

Well I'm quite amazed really. I honestly thought no way people going to post this kind of shit. One at most for the entire thread....


Im 100% sure now that ms itself create this kind of mindset for their xbox communities. More dev should realize this,they thought your game worth nothing. So whats the point? Just skip it all together and release it at other place - that should teach them.



Edit: indie games then japanese games then anything outside AAA, finally anything other than ms AAA-aaaaa games, last punch anything other than Halo and Gears

AAA shooty shooty bang bang or nothing, amirite?

The fact that COD, FIFA and Madden have a bigger install base on PS4 says what about your theory? The kind of generalisation you are making is actually as bad or worse than the terrible point you were trying to make.

 

[Neuromancer]

If the parity release clause really is dead, then that's great news.

 

[RowdyReverb]

How do you indie game fans figure out which of these to buy? That's a lot of titles to sift through

 

[nib95]

Chub, your comment about how the Xbox community is receptive to indies is interesting, because I've actually seen similar opinions from commentors on the PlayStation Blog. For the longest time any indie game would get bashed in the comment section, with similar phrases being used; "I didn't buy a $400 console to play Atari 2600 games!" A particularly egregious example was how angry people were about Nidhogg.

In any case, reception to indies has gotten much better over the past couple of months, and obviously most of these games were selling well in the first place, otherwise I doubt so many devs would have put up with it. Hopefully those vocal Xbox fans will come around.

I'm willing to bet a lot of those commentators from the PS Blog don't actually own PS4's. No point complaining about a quality new release that you are not even compelled to buy. Unfortunately these days indie games have in themselves become targets in the 'console wars'. I feel for the indie devs who must read some of the tripe that gets posted about them, as if all digital games fell under the same umbrella and didn't cover a massive range of different genres.

Worse still is the fact that it's people like us posting on these forums that are more likely to benefit from a resurgence in indies, partly because if we ever did decide to make a game, it's likely going to be how we start.

 

[Melchiah]

How do you indie game fans figure out which of these to buy? That's a lot of titles to sift through

It's not hard at all, if you follow the PS blog, their FB site, or just google what's said about the new additions to the PSN store.

That's pretty much the same as saying it was hard to find good games to play on the PS2, due to the amount of games available.