More Indie Developers Raise Their Word Against Sony: Is It Hard To Work With Them?

General news News PlayStation PlayStation News 07/03/2021

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Sony‘s focus seems to have shifted elsewhere, and this process can be noted in their approach towards indie developers.

We have discussed what Iain Garner, the co-founder of Neon Doctrine, has written on Twitter, but since then, other devs have grabbed their keyboards, and Kotaku reported about them. Here’s one anonymous developer: „Oh yeah, so there’s Nintendo who supports you, Microsoft who supports you, and there is Sony who supports its AAA machine and gives a f*** about everyone else.” Another one added, „No platform is ‘great’, but Sony is particularly terrible. They know it too – they’ve had a problem for a long time, and they’ve been telling devs they have a problem for a long time, but they’ve just never fixed anything, so the problem persists.”

A publisher claims that Xbox’s user interface is „a mess,” but it still provides room for smaller games to get promoted. It led to them hearing from fans who discovered them via the Xbox/Microsoft Store. And on Nintendo Switch, the eShop does not charge any developers or publishers to get featured. „Without paying for featuring, there are spots on the eShop you will appear without paying. New releases, great deals, all those kinds of lists. And they will put new releases and decent discounts into the Discover tab too,” the publisher added.

Let’s add what Bloomberg wrote: it explains how the indie developers are frustrated with Sony and the PlayStation Store. According to numerous sources from independent developers and individuals at Sony, their indie team is extremely understaffed! And Jason Schreier added on Twitter, „[…] PlayStation’s support team for indies is severely understaffed. Their priority is big blockbusters.”

This blockbuster focus can be seen in Hermen Hulst’s tweet as well. Here’s what the head of PlayStation Studios had to say regarding Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut: „[It is] one of my favourite open worlds to explore, now with even more to see and do on a whole new island. Our Director’s Cut releases will all offer new content, and on PlayStation 5, will leverage the hardware’s advanced features.” So what we saw as Definitive Edition on PlayStation 4 will now be Director’s Cut on PlayStation 5: re-releases with more content. And going by his wording, Ghost of Tsushima and Death Stranding will be followed by more Director’s Cut.

Then again, Microsoft and Nintendo might also have their hands dirty.

Source: PSL, PSU, PSU

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Angyal Anikó

Anikó, our news editor and communication manager, is more interested in the business side of the gaming industry. She worked at banks, and she has a vast knowledge of business life. Still, she likes puzzle and story-oriented games, like Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments, which is her favourite title. She also played The Sims 3, but after accidentally killing a whole sim family, swore not to play it again. (For our office address, email and phone number check out our IMPRESSUM)