Why is Sony getting so much more credit than MS for embracing the Indie scene?

LQX

LQX

Member
To me it seems MS was way ahead of them and even dedicated a storefront on consoles to Indie games after pushing XNA. And speaking of XNA. Why does it seem like many some indie developers looked down at that store and are almost pretending it does not exist? Their were some good stuff on there but not really quality stuff you would find on PC. Was it that limiting?
 
Cause Microsoft stopped.

And even at it's peak of indie attractiveness, it was mostly the "your shit will actually SELL here!" that was the draw, they weren't that easy to work with. (In regards to XBLA)


"Xbox Live Community Games" was a bit of a mess at launch, lots of restrictions on filesize and price, low visibility. By the time it got sorted out, there wasn't that much of an audience left, and not much of a staff left asaigned to XBLIG at Microsoft to help the developers who stuck with it.
 
it was limited in a number of ways (pricing freedom being a big one) and marketed poorly compared to xbla. most games on xblig sold like shit
 
Everyone is talking about their support for the PS4 because its the only console they can talk about at this point. When the next MS system is announced you will see support for it as well.

I dont understand giving MS shit for their pricing and closed system when the PS3 had the exact same thing. If Sony can turn their perception around i see no reason why MS cant.
 
Most people look at Indie Games as if it doesn't exist because Microsoft themselves look on it as if it doesn't exist.

In terms of an open platform on consoles, it was pretty revolutionary. The content limitations weren't massively overbearing, the approval process was clunky but if you befriended some devs in a "I'll scratch your back" fashion, you could get things through in a relatively timely manner, updates are included in your CC membership and the take from MS was around the same 70-30 split in the dev's favour as many other online publishing services.

The promise was good. The tools were accessible. The promotion was non-existent and the quality bar was nil.
 
MS does deserve credit for bringing indie games to light. It was the main attraction for me.

But sooner or later everyone will catch up and now Nintendo, Sony, PC and iOS/Android are catching up and competing fiercely for the indie market, and Microsoft can't rest on its laurels! I hope to hear Microsoft making similar changes with their next step.
 
LQX said:
To me it seems MS was way ahead of them and even dedicated a storefront on consoles to Indie games after pushing XNA. And speaking of XNA. Why does it seem like many some indie developers looked down at that store and are almost pretending it does not exist? Their were some good stuff on there but not really quality stuff you would find on PC. Was it that limiting?
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You go to gaf yet you are out of the loop? MS in the past 6 months has taken actions that completely destroys the previous relationships they built. For example, they have dropped support for XNA. Just dig a bit into MS's recent past.
 
XBOX is terrible for indie folks.

They have to pay ridiculous sums of money to add content to their games.

You want to add content? Tough luck. Pay up.
 
Mr.Wreckless said:
Everyone is talking about their support for the PS4 because its the only console they can talk about at this point. When the next MS system is announced you will see support for it as well.

I dont understand giving MS shit for their pricing and closed system when the PS3 had the exact same thing. If Sony can turn their perception around i see no reason why MS cant.
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Even in the current gen, Microsoft gets little credit for the impressive library of great indie games on XBLA. You see this all the time in the "Xbox has no exclusives" posts
 
HolyBaikal said:
XBOX is terrible for indie folks.

They have to pay ridiculous sums of money to add content to their games.

You want to add content? Tough luck. Pay up.
Click to expand...

That's for XBLA, which wasn't really supposed to be Indie friendly and in many ways still isn't, with all the update nonsense, the publisher slot allocations etc. Thing is, Indie devs ignored the "Community Games" system as much as MS did. They could have had their content updates and such as part of that publishing system for no extra money, but it just got ignored.
 
sangreal said:
Even in the current gen, Microsoft gets little credit for the impressive library of great indie games on XBLA. You see this all the time in the "Xbox has no exclusives" posts
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They probably get little credit because they don't have that many great games made by smaller development teams.

I've personally found the library on Wiiware and PSN to be vastly more appealing and Wiiware blows compared to PSN.
 
For the first half of this generation, up till about 2009 or 2010, xbla was THE place to be for an indie game. They had their own issues, but it's pretty undeniable. They did some great stuff and pushed some great games into popularity.

The past few years they kind of...stopped. There's still been some great games, but they arent really promoting them and even last year's summer of arcade was lousy and didn't put some of the best indie games they had (like spelunky) in the line up. It's baffling.

Now in the past few years sony's kind of taken the crown away from MS in terms of indie games. They're much more developer friendly and are actually promoting their games. (even if their storefront is awful. PS4 will help change that) So that's why they're getting all of the praise right now. MS got a lot of praise in their day too.
 
CookTrain said:
That's for XBLA, which wasn't really supposed to be Indie friendly and in many ways still isn't, with all the update nonsense, the publisher slot allocations etc. Thing is, Indie devs ignored the "Community Games" system as much as MS did. They could have had their content updates and such as part of that publishing system for no extra money, but it just got ignored.
Click to expand...

The games have no achievements or leaderboard support, pricing was 200msp, 400msp, or 800msp only, the games had to be under 50mb to be 200msp, couldn't be larger than 150mb at all, price couldn't be changed more than once every three months, the original demo time limit was 4 minutes, a developer could initially release 8 games per XNA account.

All of these have changed, other than achievements and leaderboards, but that's a lot of stumbling blocks to turn off developers and consumers.
 
MS stopped, and burnt a lot of bridges with indie big names (Blow, Fish, and Team Meat are all pretty mad about their XBLA experience, for example)

There's also the Yaroze-PS Camp setup that Sony's had going for fifteen years or so, although it's mainly pitched to Japanese indies.
 
CookTrain said:
That's for XBLA, which wasn't really supposed to be Indie friendly and in many ways still isn't, with all the update nonsense, the publisher slot allocations etc. Thing is, Indie devs ignored the "Community Games" system as much as MS did. They could have had their content updates and such as part of that publishing system for no extra money, but it just got ignored.
Click to expand...

But community games were likewise a far less than ideal place for people to be putting their games. No ads, no curation, and the fact that finding them practically requires a step by step guide made the proposition of putting something there as good as sending it to die. There has to be some middle ground for exposure. Even XBLA games seem to vanish after their brief, if ever, moment in the spotlight. Sony didn't offer a better alternative on PS3, so I'll be curious to see how both handle it in the future.
 
LQX said:
To me it seems MS was way ahead of them and even dedicated a storefront on consoles to Indie games after pushing XNA. And speaking of XNA. Why does it seem like many some indie developers looked down at that store and are almost pretending it does not exist? Their were some good stuff on there but not really quality stuff you would find on PC. Was it that limiting?
Click to expand...

Because they segregate indie stuff off into a ghetto with less features than XBLA games which makes them unattractive to consumers.

Any indie games that do eventually make it to XBLA have usually had to take the risks and prove themselves on other platforms before Microsoft will let them on the service and those that do make it find themselves forced to pay a fortune to get patches and DLC out, wiping out their profits in the process.

Microsoft only cherry pick the guaranteed winners once the hard work has been done elsewhere. They do nothing to cultivate and encourage indie developers.
 
Because Sony is doing a better job lately. Many Indie developers had bad experiences with Microsoft. Look at the TeamMeat Post-Mortem for example.
 
Triple U said:
Because Sony has built a reputation of being better to work with.
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The PS3 has the same strict pricing, approval, and patch process as the 360. So how did they build a better reputation by doing the exact same thing?


Sony had a chance to be friendly to developers this gen and chose not to. So why is MS the only one catching flak?
 
Mr.Wreckless said:
The PS3 has the same strict pricing, approval, and patch process as the 360. So how did they build a better reputation by doing the exact same thing?


Sony had a chance to be friendly to developers this gen and chose not to. So why is MS the only one catching flak?
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Because Sony will let you self-publish and Microsoft won't.
 
People look at indie games with rose tinted glasses - a lot of them are garbage.

I'm thankful for quality control, though I'm not sure to what extent Microsoft control the output. Judging from the Dust: An Eslysian Tale panel at PAX, none at all.
 
Mr.Wreckless said:
The PS3 has the same strict pricing, approval, and patch process as the 360. So how did they build a better reputation by doing the exact same thing?
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I'm not sure they are the same thing? Iirc you can self publish on PSN, whilst you can't on xbla. There were a number of articles a few years ago about a tightening environment for indies on Xbox. Microsoft started to have a more regulated schedule of releases on xbla, and to get a place in that schedule required an approved publisher. Microsoft publishes some games for indies, but they've a limited set of places in their schedule, and have high exclusivity requirements.

Now you can self publish on xblig, but most do not seem to consider it a serious option in the same vein as xbla or PSN.
 
my guess is because theres lots of stories or rumors about how awful it is dealing with microsoft and you dont really get that from sony

Regardless if its the same on both sides, its a perception thing. Having Blow at the PS4 conference was a big deal for the indie scene, indie game the movie has scenes of team meat watching their game launch and not get the front page splash on xbox live like they were supposed to, Fish being all "if I put this on fucking PC i could have patched it whenever I wanted for free" are all negatives for the MS indie image. Not to mention when Super Meatboy went to PC they instantly started talking about how much better the sales were in a smaller amount of time compared to the 360 issues they had.

the RCR guys talking about how building his game on the Vita was a dream and how every indie studio should do that, Sony giving top billing to Journey and Flower and putting indie games into PS+ just helps boost their image on that front
 
Mr.Wreckless said:
Did they allow self publishing on the PS3? If so then why didnt the indies go that route instead of finding a publisher and running to XBLA?
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MS offered to publish, and the smaller you are the more you're driven by showing off your idea (typically on the platform that's stomping all over your region like Godzilla, between idealism and lack of a localization budget.)

It turns out that MS is a really shitty publisher to deal with, and Sony stepped up their US game until they started getting beat by 15% rather than 50%.
 
Microsoft:
*Messed up the indie storefront
*Have ridiculous restrictions for XBLA games
*Messed upp their relationships with high profile indie developers
*Killed XNA

Sony:
*Are improving all aspects.


While Microsoft hade a huge head start over Sony, they dropped the ball so bad that Sony have already caught up and passed them. Even if we base it mostly on an unreleased console, it just shows how bad MS are now.
 
Why Sony has this reputation is down to the recency effect.

What MS did 4-5 years ago with Summer of Arcade and such is all but forgotten but was actually quite a big deal.

Phonomezer said:
Where are the reciepts?
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Jonathan Blow and Team Meat have said so.
 
XBLIG isn't a dedicated storefront, it's a ghetto. It's always been very poorly organized and managed compared to "real" XBLA games, and serves mainly to create and artificial separation between digital releases, where devs have to deal with a different set of draconian rules and go through the horror stories experienced by the likes of Polytron and Team Meat to get a release in the regular XBL storefront.
 
Mr.Wreckless said:
The PS3 has the same strict pricing, approval, and patch process as the 360. So how did they build a better reputation by doing the exact same thing?


Sony had a chance to be friendly to developers this gen and chose not to. So why is MS the only one catching flak?
Click to expand...

Sony has been embracing the indie scene for a while, even before MS decided to join the video game industry:

-Net Yaroze
-Linux for PS2
- PS CAMP

The reason why MS got a lot of praise from the indie community was because of their tools and marketplace, but they never really had any programs to support them, at least not any noteworthy ones.

Sony caught up pretty quick with the PS3, offering tools, online space, as well as actual campaigns like Pub Fund. And from the looks of it, devs also seem to love to support PS+.


With XNA dead, and not much else other than XBL sales placement now and then, is it really hard to see why MS is getting most of the flak for not supporting the indie scene?
 
Mr.Wreckless said:
Did they allow self publishing on the PS3? If so then why didnt the indies go that route instead of finding a publisher and running to XBLA?
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Games sold more on XBLA than on PSN. So getting MS or another "real" publisher was still seen as a better deal than self-publishing on PSN (and Steam was not the beast it is today). XBLA is not that goldmine of guaranteed sales anymore, though, so indie developers are making noise that Microsoft isn't worth the trouble.

Most recent example was Retro City Rampage:
"It cost more to do the XBLA version than all other SKUs combined. Made more on all other platforms. XBLA: 'a learning experience.'"
 
shiftplusone said:
my guess is because theres lots of stories or rumors about how awful it is dealing with microsoft and you dont really get that from sony

Regardless if its the same on both sides, its a perception thing. Having Blow at the PS4 conference was a big deal for the indie scene, indie game the movie has scenes of team meat watching their game launch and not get the front page splash on xbox live like they were supposed to, Fish being all "if I put this on fucking PC i could have patched it whenever I wanted for free" are all negatives for the MS indie image. Not to mention when Super Meatboy went to PC they instantly started talking about how much better the sales were in a smaller amount of time compared to the 360 issues they had.

the RCR guys talking about how building his game on the Vita was a dream and how every indie studio should do that, Sony giving top billing to Journey and Flower and putting indie games into PS+ just helps boost their image on that front
Click to expand...

Why would Sony not give top billing to flower and journey when they paid for the development and marketing for both of those titles?

I also thought Microsoft offered to waive the patch fees for Fez but that offer was declined by phil fish and company.
 
Mr.Wreckless said:
Did they allow self publishing on the PS3?
Click to expand...

Yes, it's been a long running policy.

If so then why didnt the indies go that route instead of finding a publisher and running to XBLA?
Click to expand...

Many did? If you mean the ones who went to xbla, why they didn't just self publish on PSN, for some time some indies would have had the impressn that xbla was the bigger/better market. It was the original console digital store for smaller games. As others have said, though, it hasn't helped the perception of the indie environment on Xbox that multiple high profile devs coming out the other end of that process have been full of complaints. There wasn't a small legion of indie favourites bad mouthing the Xbox experience 4 or 5 years ago.
 
Sony is getting the credit maybe because they're the only company we have information about dealing with indies next generation? It's hard to give credit to MS when we knowing nothing about their indie plans so why wouldn't Sony get more credit right now for addressing their problems with the indie scene compared to not even knowing what the hell the indie scene is like on the new Xbox? Give credit where credit is due regardless of what company it is, so people are giving credit to the company they actually have information on right now...

Not sure why MS would be getting more credit than Sony right now over the indie scene without any knowledge on it and MS definitely wasn't perfect this gen either so why can't we wait to see what they do first before comparing the two? People are just happy that Sony is really making an effort to fix all of their previous mistakes with developers and I'm sure people will be happy if MS does the same.

Not everything has to be a battle in "The Console Wars" and we can't compare the two without knowledge of both companies' plans...Give credit where credit is due and that's to Sony right now since they're the only console the developers can talk about at the moment. I can't even imagine how this place will be during and after E3 when every little thing is a huge debate on here. Should be good times! :D
 
Phonomezer said:
No they didn't, people are using an unreleased console and an unannounced console as examples.
Click to expand...

Self publishing has been an option on PSN for yonks. They're 'just' making a bunch of other policy changes for ps4/ps3/vita, but self publishing isn't a new one.
 
The proof is in the pudding, and XBLA is still getting more indie games than PSN. Of course that may change on the back of the changes Sony is putting in place for PS4, but we still don't know what Microsoft's plans for Durango are yet.
 
Mr.Wreckless said:
The PS3 has the same strict pricing, approval, and patch process as the 360. So how did they build a better reputation by doing the exact same thing?


Sony had a chance to be friendly to developers this gen and chose not to. So why is MS the only one catching flak?
Click to expand...
You got a source? I don't think it's the same at all. I also would like some evidence that Sony chose not to be friendly with indies? Because I can point to incidents of the contrary?
 
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