PlayStation will not abandon the indie devs in the next console generation either.

Greg Rice, who formerly was the head of the Xbox Game Studios-owned, currently Psychonauts 2-developing Double Fine’s publishing arm (plus he was responsible for the Day of the Devs event, which was effectively a festival for smaller indie developers), has joined Sony Interactive Entertainment. „[I’m] very excited to announce I’m joining the amazing team at Sony Interactive Entertainment as the Global Head of Indie Accounts. I’ll be managing all independent developer and publisher accounts and building new initiatives to support indies big and small from all over the world. [I’m] looking forward to being part of the next generation of great PlayStation games!”, Rice wrote on Twitter. With the last comment, we can confirm that Sony has pulled Rice over from its competitor Microsoft because of the PlayStation 5. He will work together with former Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida. Shu will bring in new people to PlayStation while acting as a link between Sony and the devs, and Rice will manage the accounts. Thus, Double Fine has given up on the publishing altogether – Microsoft probably wouldn’t allow them to do so anyway.

In the next generation, Sony will continue to focus on narrative-based games: „We’ve always worked in a world where changes happened fast — technically, but also creatively. This may very well be the golden age of gaming. There has never been this diversity of experiences — from massive AAA online games that explore future worlds, to deeply personal Indie projects that explore the human condition. As PlayStation, we need to provide a platform that includes all those different voices, all those different experiences. We are very committed to the types of games we’ve been making at Worldwide Studios for the last decade: big, spectacular experiences with story and characters at the core. We will keep making these games because we love to make them. And as a brand we are eager to branch out and start including and curating a new generation of developers, that create new and different experiences for a new generation of gamers,” Hermen Hulst, the new head of SIE Worldwide Studios (formerly the general manager of Killzone-, and Horizon Zero Dawn-developing Guerrilla Games), told Gamesindustry.

Sony might be a pillar in the next-gen that hasn’t changed much.

Source: VentureBeat, Gamesindustry

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