8 ms·

Sony will allow indie devs to publish their own games on PlayStation 4

243 points by jeffreyfox 13y ago

KingLot 13y ago
Relevant. "We're Indie, we like Microsoft. Too Controversial?" http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesSilva/20130523/192832/Were_Indie_we_like_Microsoft_Too_Controversial.php http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesSilva/20130523/192832/Were_I...
- eropple 13y ago
  That the guy who has been getting what amounts to fairly special treatment since the jump (with The Dishwasher) likes the guys who created his meal ticket is not terribly surprising. (Not saying he's wrong to feel that way, but his biases are stark.)
TillE 13y ago
We still don't have any real details, mind. This could be anything from a fully open app store model to Steam's arbitrarily selective approval.
- wmf 13y ago
  When they say they will allow X it means they will allow exactly X and no more, so I'm sure there will be approval. But developers may get to keep ~70% instead of ~30%.
bichiliad 13y ago
Depending on how open this is, this could conceivably make Ouya obsolete.
- thejosh 13y ago
  Apart from the hardware, market traction/marketing, AAA games.. yes having indie games on the PS4 will make the Ouya obsolete.
- _pmf_ 13y ago
  > Depending on how open this is, this could conceivably make Ouya obsolete. The Ouya is perfectly capable of making itself obsolete, thank you very much.
- kayoone 13y ago
  imo the Ouya is pretty much obsolete. Current gen smartphones are more powerful and coupled with an HDMI cable and a bluetooth controller (from the PS3 for example) offer the same thing plus are portable. Ouya is all about its own Store and ecosystem, games built for their system/controller etc and also its low price point. I still think it will have a hard time.
  - sp332 13y ago
    Current gen smartphones are 3x more expensive once you add a game controller. That's a pretty massive difference in market.
    - kayoone 13y ago
      true, but the ouya target demographic likely has a smartphone anyway. Most of the mass market will probably never hear about the Ouya.
- seanp2k2 13y ago
  ...and following the time-honoured Android tradition of platform fragmentation, Mad Catz is also releasing an Android console! http://www.geek.com/android/mad-catz-project-mojo-takes-on-ouya-gamepop-for-android-console-crown-1557958/ http://www.geek.com/android/mad-catz-project-mojo-takes-on-o... OUYA had the spotlight for a hot minute there, and they kinda blew it with crappy hardware, crappy UX, and crappy games.
jebblue 13y ago
Remember how PS 3 let users load their own Linux then a year or two later they sent out a firmware update that turned it off. Like imagine buying a car then the dealership sends a rep over and takes the nice stereo out and installs a cheaper model...but doesn't give you a refund, or a choice. And this stood up in court?
- xenomachina 13y ago
  It was actually close to three years later, but the rest of your point stands. I, too, am concerned about them "taking back" features I paid for. That said, in the case of Other OS, I'm pretty sure the only reason they got away with it was because almost nobody used this feature. Indie games would hopefully be more popular, and hence harder for them to back out of.
- xatnys 13y ago
  Sony dangles these features like candy and they can take them away on a whim, but I don't think it will happen this time. Sony took away Linux because they were scrambling to plug any potential hole that would lead to piracy on the PS3. Aside from curiosity, the foremost minds that opened up (jailbroke) the PS3 were motivated because of the lack of homebrew support -- the ability for hobbyists to run unsigned software on the PS3. Getting license to and legally develop for the PS3 is simply not a viable avenue for most people. Sony appears to have their bases covered this time in showing their support for indie developers. If it is easy, and most importantly accessible to develop software on the PS4, you won't see nearly the offensive to crack the system open apart from proof of concept, unpublished or artificially limited exploits.
- _pmf_ 13y ago
  > Remember how PS 3 let users load their own Linux then a year or two later they sent out a firmware update that turned it off. It's unfortunate that the attention span of most users is as short. Aside from the Linux issue, the PS3 was decidedly hostile towards small game companies for a very long time (ridiculous development system costs, year long approval process etc.).
  - 13y ago
mkhattab 13y ago
Yes, but what about the SDK costs? I believe special development hardware was required for PS3 development which had/has a cost of around $10k. If Sony is offering similar pricing for the PS4 SDK then what's the point of indie publishing?
- kanja 13y ago
  Doesn't the PS4 support unity?
  - beefsack 13y ago
    I think you mean Unity supporting PS4, and apparently it's coming: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/03/21/unity-coming-to-sony-consoles-this-year/ http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/03/21/unity-coming-to-sony-con...
- wmf 13y ago
  IIRC Sony gives free SDKs to indie stars. The full process is: 1. Develop/release indie game on Windows. 2. Sell a lot of copies (relatively speaking). 3. Sony gives you free SDK. 4. Release indie game on PS3/4. 5. For your second game (e.g. Transistor, The Witness) you can develop for PS4 in parallel with Windows because you already have the SDK.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    That's hardly a good way to bring innovation to your system. Sounds like "Me too, Me too!".
  - eropple 13y ago
    That's not the PSVita process. I have a hunch this'll be a lot closer to the Vita process than that.
    - workbench 13y ago
      Can you enlighten us to the Vita process? I've dabbled with iOS games but found it a tad boring as I love games with proper controls so the possibilities of this excite me.
greghinch 13y ago
I wonder if this is actually a good idea? Seems similar to one of the major things that led to the "Video Game Crash of 1983" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983#Loss_of_publishing_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_cras...
- vinkelhake 13y ago
  Isn't it essentially the situation we've had with Xbox Live Indie Games and most of the games in Apple's/Google's app stores? There's a tremendous amount of trash on those marketplaces. I haven't seen any indications that it would lead to a crash.
  - greghinch 13y ago
    Probably not a crash for the market as a whole, but certainly not a good idea for a company who's console is struggling against the competition.
    - georgemcbay 13y ago
      One of the major reasons I'm ditching the Xbox (I owned an Xbox and own two Xbox 360s) is because of the PS4's much clearer focus on supporting indie games. And yes, I realize for every The Witness or Braid there will be 20 or more pieces of crap, but this isn't 1982 where we are trying to figure out what to buy based solely on cover art. We have the Internet, the stuff worth paying attention to will be filtered up to the masses with or without Sony's explicit help.
- flomo 13y ago
  IMO, this is largely an urban legend. The crash of 1983 was almost entirely caused by first party developers (namely Atari), and very non-just-in-time retail inventory practices.
Smerity 13y ago
I'd be immensely wary of Sony declaring themselves open to indie devs. When I was a teenager I did homebrew development on the Sony PSP. Sony did every damned thing in their power to stop it. To run homebrew, you had to either run an older version of firmware or root the device. Every time an exploit was patched, a new one was found. This inevitably meant a lot of people spent a lot of time rooting the PSP[1]. I was impressed with how the security of the device fell time and time again to the community. If Sony just allowed the PSP to run homebrew games, they'd not be in such a mess. Many of the developers rooting the devices just wanted to run their own software, but the shadow community would use that result to pirate games. Separating the two communities by allowing homebrew software on their device would have made sense for their own protection. This was then followed up by the PS3. After releasing with both the ability to run Linux, they removed both. You paid for a device with X, then they removed X. Understandably the community became somewhat irate. Eventually their private signing key for their entire console was leaked due to the desire to allow homebrew and to restore OtherOS (Linux) support[2]. Sony's legal department tried to fix that... So, from all this past history, I wouldn't trust Sony's new direction. At the very least not until they start to act on their new found conviction. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable#Homebrew http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable#Homebrew [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz#Hacking_the_PlayStation_3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz#Hacking_the_PlaySta... Edit: Thanks for Dylan16807 correcting me re: PS2 emulation. Having a deeper read into it, the situation is confusing -- some models have hardware PS2 support, others do emulation, and then it was completely dropped whilst "PS2 Classics" (recompiled or via emulation) were released on the PS3 as pay for downloads.
- onedev 13y ago
  If you watched the announcement I think you can get a sense that Sony has learned a lot from their past. You can tell that they cared about the people that they made this product for. Something really striking about this whole Xbox One vs PS4 thing is how one sided the enthusiasm is (in favor of the PS4). It's all the more striking when you consider that the gaming community is one of the most passionate, fickle, and hardest-to-please bunch of people there are. I think Sony really listened to what people really wanted and made something with those things in mind. Just gauging the reactions from across the internet and from across my diverse group of friends, the PS4 is being received so incredibly well and the sentiment towards the Xbox One is exactly the opposite.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
It's hard to say how this will work out, but compared to Microsoft who has seemed to expend a tremendous amount of effort crapping all over indie game devs it's hard to see this as anything other than very promising.
drawkbox 13y ago
PS4 more like an appstore, the war of consoles has already been won. Congratulations Sony. Companies like Halfbrick, Rovio, Firemint, Pixelbite and many many more were made by an open market on mobile. I am excited to see what games will pop up on PS4. They already had better indie exclusives like Joe Danger, Fat Princess and more. Good times ahead for gaming on the PS4. What I don't get is being open appstores attracts developers and sells more hardware and subsequently more games. Why would Microsoft shut that down? Bigger economies always sell more.
- adventured 13y ago
  Microsoft has a very long history of screwing up once they get on top. They're great when they're the underdog doing the chasing, they tend to catch up over time. Once they finally build a great product, you can almost always count on them royally screwing it up. Then the process starts all over again.
  - freehunter 13y ago
    It tends to be Microsoft dumping money into something to gain their top status, then once they try to make a profit on it they mess up. Their profit maximization formula doesn't seem to have a field for "will this lose customers?"
- Zigurd 13y ago
  Isn't Activision is publishing Rovio games on consoles?
  - drawkbox 13y ago
    Rovio wouldn't exist as it does without the success of Angry Birds on mobile and the open market there. On consoles currently you have to publish 4 titles a year to be an approved publisher. So they need them probably to publish but I am sure they would love to self-publish their own or it is more beneficial to use Activision now that they are bigger or need the retail side. Small and medium companies that are up and coming like Rovio once was need open markets and self publishing. They shouldn't have to sign over a large portion of profits because they can't launch 4 titles a year. Open markets allow some companies to break through, most wouldn't be there without the mobile game disruption.
z3phyr 13y ago
Will they be shipping something like XNA? Will they be using C# or other managed languages at engine level?
seanp2k2 13y ago
Welp, I know what console I'm buying next. I haven't purchased a gaming console since the very first PS2s that hit eBay before xmas that year, but I think it's once again time.
FatalBaboon 13y ago
In a time when the freedom on internet is top news and highly controversial, he who sells freedom is in a lucrative business. If Sony does maintains significant advantage on the freedom of its users, they will crush Microsoft. It's not even going to be funny.
Fuxy 13y ago
I'm so enjoying this... It's going to be a blood bath for Xbox One. If we include the fact that the Xbox will be spying on you in the living room and most likely giving the data to the NSA it's obvious what we should all purchase. I's rather not have the NSA recording my living room.
jokoon 13y ago
yeah, you still have to hope it will be easy to program this stuff. and let's see the technical details on that too.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ps4fanboy 13y ago
Can I trade them?
specto 13y ago
Online play seems to require Playstation Plus however. It seems they've followed Microsoft in this matter. So if your game is online, it could get interesting. Though from what I understand playstation plus gives steam level discounts to gamers on a console.
- caw 13y ago
  Indeed. It's not quite as cheap as steam (75% off), but if you keep your subscription up you'll get a bunch of free games that puts the subscription into "great deal" territory. I was on the fence about it for a long time, but after the second time my console died and lost all my game saves, I wanted the cloud save feature. It ends up that since I bought the PS Plus subscription, I actually haven't bought any games. I'm a infrequent gamer - I play games, but not every day. My back catalog of good games is pretty big, so there's a lot of good stuff that comes through the freebie channel. http://blog.us.playstation.com/2013/06/10/playstation-plus-e3-2013-sale-free-machinarium-uncharted-3-xcom-more/ http://blog.us.playstation.com/2013/06/10/playstation-plus-e.... If you scroll down you see the discounts on purchases. This month they gave out Uncharted 3, XCom, LBP Karting (I bought it when it was $10 for PS+ subscribers), and Deus Ex Human Revolution. Previously they've had Ratchet and Clank, Spec Ops: The Line, Sleeping Dogs, and a bunch of other big studio titles. If you bought just the titles for this month you'd spend at least $50, even at the cheapest retailers online.
apa-sl 13y ago
emmm, OK but Nintendo has already did that on Nintendo Wii U - inde dev can publish their game (after Nintendo's approval) without coping with any big publisher. It is funny how Nintendo is super innovative but often overlook (similar as Opera on the browsers market).
- itafroma 13y ago
  The Wii U didn't innovate on this: Sony has been allowing developers to self publish on the PS3 and PS Vita for some time now[1]. This is just a continuation of that policy into the next generation. Much of the news coming out of E3 for Sony has been "we're not changing our policies, unlike our competitor". [1]: http://us.playstation.com/develop/ http://us.playstation.com/develop/
kabdib 13y ago
It'll be interesting to see what kind of restrictions they'll have on account access, networking, DLC and so forth. Sony is infamous for saying things like this, then screwing people with the details.
dman 13y ago
Is getting a devkit getting any easier / cheaper? Apple got to where it was by opening up the ios development to everyone and not requiring an arcane process to become an approved developer.
- teamonkey 13y ago
  > not requiring an arcane process Xcode?
Zigurd 13y ago
This is another symptom that the marketing logic of consoles is off the rails. Consoles were closed devices because that's how console users could be made to pay for console hardware - through game prices. For a couple decades, the economics of this worked just fine. Until just recently, developing for a console market of a few tens of millions was far more lucrative than writing for any "open" games market. But now, with billions of smartphones, which amounts to a crushing ratio of 2.x orders of magnitude over consoles, games for smart mobile devices are making a serious dent - enough so that Microsoft led with their "old people" passive media features for Xbox One. It is an open question if the console economy can be sustained. Can enough be sold to make a viable market for game publishers? Hardcore gamers have PC gaming to fall back upon, so they will not save the consoles. The "living room PC" was always a loser, and it is hard to see how mixing that in with a console is now going to be a winner.
- Goronmon 13y ago
  But now, with billions of smartphones, which amounts to a crushing ratio of 2.x orders of magnitude over consoles, games for smart mobile devices are making a serious dent - enough so that Microsoft led with their "old people" passive media features for Xbox One. Do you have any evidence for this "serious dent" that smartphone gaming is having on the industry? I don't see how the smartphone game market overlaps with the same market that is purchasing an Xbox 360 or PS3. If anything, it overlaps the handheld market, but the Nintendo 3DS is still selling very well despite competing with smartphones for people's gaming dollars. For the "gaming" market (ie. people who play more than the occasional round of Solitaire or Angry Birds), smartphones are still underwhelming. Even take the Madden and CoD crowd that many gaming enthusiasts disparage. Why would they care about lackluster smartphone games? If anything the smartphone market aligns with those who bought a Wii for Wii Sports and then hardly used the thing much longer other than maybe as a Netflix device. But that was never a long-term market anyways. Plus, the smartphone gaming market seems to have a pricing issue where everyone expects games to be either free or $1. Can you imagine a game on the Google Play store costing $30+ dollars as they do for a 3DS or Vita? Let along $60 for a PS4 or Xbone One title?
  - Zigurd 13y ago
coldarchon 13y ago
I can't believe they finally have a remake of Killer Insinct, put it exclusively on xbox one and you have to buy all characters except one ..

243 points by jeffreyfox 13y ago

Relevant. "We're Indie, we like Microsoft. Too Controversial?" http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesSilva/20130523/192832/Were_Indie_we_like_Microsoft_Too_Controversial.php http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesSilva/20130523/192832/Were_I...

eropple 13y ago
That the guy who has been getting what amounts to fairly special treatment since the jump (with The Dishwasher) likes the guys who created his meal ticket is not terribly surprising. (Not saying he's wrong to feel that way, but his biases are stark.)

TillE 13y ago

We still don't have any real details, mind. This could be anything from a fully open app store model to Steam's arbitrarily selective approval.

wmf 13y ago
When they say they will allow X it means they will allow exactly X and no more, so I'm sure there will be approval. But developers may get to keep ~70% instead of ~30%.

bichiliad 13y ago

Depending on how open this is, this could conceivably make Ouya obsolete.

thejosh 13y ago
Apart from the hardware, market traction/marketing, AAA games.. yes having indie games on the PS4 will make the Ouya obsolete.
_pmf_ 13y ago
> Depending on how open this is, this could conceivably make Ouya obsolete. The Ouya is perfectly capable of making itself obsolete, thank you very much.
kayoone 13y ago
imo the Ouya is pretty much obsolete. Current gen smartphones are more powerful and coupled with an HDMI cable and a bluetooth controller (from the PS3 for example) offer the same thing plus are portable. Ouya is all about its own Store and ecosystem, games built for their system/controller etc and also its low price point. I still think it will have a hard time.
- sp332 13y ago
  Current gen smartphones are 3x more expensive once you add a game controller. That's a pretty massive difference in market.
  - kayoone 13y ago
    true, but the ouya target demographic likely has a smartphone anyway. Most of the mass market will probably never hear about the Ouya.
seanp2k2 13y ago
...and following the time-honoured Android tradition of platform fragmentation, Mad Catz is also releasing an Android console! http://www.geek.com/android/mad-catz-project-mojo-takes-on-ouya-gamepop-for-android-console-crown-1557958/ http://www.geek.com/android/mad-catz-project-mojo-takes-on-o... OUYA had the spotlight for a hot minute there, and they kinda blew it with crappy hardware, crappy UX, and crappy games.

jebblue 13y ago

Remember how PS 3 let users load their own Linux then a year or two later they sent out a firmware update that turned it off. Like imagine buying a car then the dealership sends a rep over and takes the nice stereo out and installs a cheaper model...but doesn't give you a refund, or a choice. And this stood up in court?

xenomachina 13y ago
It was actually close to three years later, but the rest of your point stands. I, too, am concerned about them "taking back" features I paid for. That said, in the case of Other OS, I'm pretty sure the only reason they got away with it was because almost nobody used this feature. Indie games would hopefully be more popular, and hence harder for them to back out of.
xatnys 13y ago
Sony dangles these features like candy and they can take them away on a whim, but I don't think it will happen this time. Sony took away Linux because they were scrambling to plug any potential hole that would lead to piracy on the PS3. Aside from curiosity, the foremost minds that opened up (jailbroke) the PS3 were motivated because of the lack of homebrew support -- the ability for hobbyists to run unsigned software on the PS3. Getting license to and legally develop for the PS3 is simply not a viable avenue for most people. Sony appears to have their bases covered this time in showing their support for indie developers. If it is easy, and most importantly accessible to develop software on the PS4, you won't see nearly the offensive to crack the system open apart from proof of concept, unpublished or artificially limited exploits.
_pmf_ 13y ago
> Remember how PS 3 let users load their own Linux then a year or two later they sent out a firmware update that turned it off. It's unfortunate that the attention span of most users is as short. Aside from the Linux issue, the PS3 was decidedly hostile towards small game companies for a very long time (ridiculous development system costs, year long approval process etc.).
- 13y ago

mkhattab 13y ago

Yes, but what about the SDK costs? I believe special development hardware was required for PS3 development which had/has a cost of around $10k. If Sony is offering similar pricing for the PS4 SDK then what's the point of indie publishing?

kanja 13y ago
Doesn't the PS4 support unity?
- beefsack 13y ago
  I think you mean Unity supporting PS4, and apparently it's coming: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/03/21/unity-coming-to-sony-consoles-this-year/ http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/03/21/unity-coming-to-sony-con...
wmf 13y ago
IIRC Sony gives free SDKs to indie stars. The full process is: 1. Develop/release indie game on Windows. 2. Sell a lot of copies (relatively speaking). 3. Sony gives you free SDK. 4. Release indie game on PS3/4. 5. For your second game (e.g. Transistor, The Witness) you can develop for PS4 in parallel with Windows because you already have the SDK.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  That's hardly a good way to bring innovation to your system. Sounds like "Me too, Me too!".
- eropple 13y ago
  That's not the PSVita process. I have a hunch this'll be a lot closer to the Vita process than that.
  - workbench 13y ago
    Can you enlighten us to the Vita process? I've dabbled with iOS games but found it a tad boring as I love games with proper controls so the possibilities of this excite me.

greghinch 13y ago

I wonder if this is actually a good idea? Seems similar to one of the major things that led to the "Video Game Crash of 1983" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983#Loss_of_publishing_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_cras...

vinkelhake 13y ago
Isn't it essentially the situation we've had with Xbox Live Indie Games and most of the games in Apple's/Google's app stores? There's a tremendous amount of trash on those marketplaces. I haven't seen any indications that it would lead to a crash.
- greghinch 13y ago
  Probably not a crash for the market as a whole, but certainly not a good idea for a company who's console is struggling against the competition.
  - georgemcbay 13y ago
    One of the major reasons I'm ditching the Xbox (I owned an Xbox and own two Xbox 360s) is because of the PS4's much clearer focus on supporting indie games. And yes, I realize for every The Witness or Braid there will be 20 or more pieces of crap, but this isn't 1982 where we are trying to figure out what to buy based solely on cover art. We have the Internet, the stuff worth paying attention to will be filtered up to the masses with or without Sony's explicit help.
flomo 13y ago
IMO, this is largely an urban legend. The crash of 1983 was almost entirely caused by first party developers (namely Atari), and very non-just-in-time retail inventory practices.

Smerity 13y ago

I'd be immensely wary of Sony declaring themselves open to indie devs. When I was a teenager I did homebrew development on the Sony PSP. Sony did every damned thing in their power to stop it. To run homebrew, you had to either run an older version of firmware or root the device. Every time an exploit was patched, a new one was found. This inevitably meant a lot of people spent a lot of time rooting the PSP[1]. I was impressed with how the security of the device fell time and time again to the community. If Sony just allowed the PSP to run homebrew games, they'd not be in such a mess. Many of the developers rooting the devices just wanted to run their own software, but the shadow community would use that result to pirate games. Separating the two communities by allowing homebrew software on their device would have made sense for their own protection. This was then followed up by the PS3. After releasing with both the ability to run Linux, they removed both. You paid for a device with X, then they removed X. Understandably the community became somewhat irate. Eventually their private signing key for their entire console was leaked due to the desire to allow homebrew and to restore OtherOS (Linux) support[2]. Sony's legal department tried to fix that... So, from all this past history, I wouldn't trust Sony's new direction. At the very least not until they start to act on their new found conviction. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable#Homebrew http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable#Homebrew [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz#Hacking_the_PlayStation_3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz#Hacking_the_PlaySta... Edit: Thanks for Dylan16807 correcting me re: PS2 emulation. Having a deeper read into it, the situation is confusing -- some models have hardware PS2 support, others do emulation, and then it was completely dropped whilst "PS2 Classics" (recompiled or via emulation) were released on the PS3 as pay for downloads.

onedev 13y ago
If you watched the announcement I think you can get a sense that Sony has learned a lot from their past. You can tell that they cared about the people that they made this product for. Something really striking about this whole Xbox One vs PS4 thing is how one sided the enthusiasm is (in favor of the PS4). It's all the more striking when you consider that the gaming community is one of the most passionate, fickle, and hardest-to-please bunch of people there are. I think Sony really listened to what people really wanted and made something with those things in mind. Just gauging the reactions from across the internet and from across my diverse group of friends, the PS4 is being received so incredibly well and the sentiment towards the Xbox One is exactly the opposite.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

It's hard to say how this will work out, but compared to Microsoft who has seemed to expend a tremendous amount of effort crapping all over indie game devs it's hard to see this as anything other than very promising.

drawkbox 13y ago

PS4 more like an appstore, the war of consoles has already been won. Congratulations Sony. Companies like Halfbrick, Rovio, Firemint, Pixelbite and many many more were made by an open market on mobile. I am excited to see what games will pop up on PS4. They already had better indie exclusives like Joe Danger, Fat Princess and more. Good times ahead for gaming on the PS4. What I don't get is being open appstores attracts developers and sells more hardware and subsequently more games. Why would Microsoft shut that down? Bigger economies always sell more.

adventured 13y ago
Microsoft has a very long history of screwing up once they get on top. They're great when they're the underdog doing the chasing, they tend to catch up over time. Once they finally build a great product, you can almost always count on them royally screwing it up. Then the process starts all over again.
- freehunter 13y ago
  It tends to be Microsoft dumping money into something to gain their top status, then once they try to make a profit on it they mess up. Their profit maximization formula doesn't seem to have a field for "will this lose customers?"
Zigurd 13y ago
Isn't Activision is publishing Rovio games on consoles?
- drawkbox 13y ago
  Rovio wouldn't exist as it does without the success of Angry Birds on mobile and the open market there. On consoles currently you have to publish 4 titles a year to be an approved publisher. So they need them probably to publish but I am sure they would love to self-publish their own or it is more beneficial to use Activision now that they are bigger or need the retail side. Small and medium companies that are up and coming like Rovio once was need open markets and self publishing. They shouldn't have to sign over a large portion of profits because they can't launch 4 titles a year. Open markets allow some companies to break through, most wouldn't be there without the mobile game disruption.

z3phyr 13y ago

Will they be shipping something like XNA? Will they be using C# or other managed languages at engine level?

seanp2k2 13y ago

Welp, I know what console I'm buying next. I haven't purchased a gaming console since the very first PS2s that hit eBay before xmas that year, but I think it's once again time.

FatalBaboon 13y ago

In a time when the freedom on internet is top news and highly controversial, he who sells freedom is in a lucrative business. If Sony does maintains significant advantage on the freedom of its users, they will crush Microsoft. It's not even going to be funny.

Fuxy 13y ago

I'm so enjoying this... It's going to be a blood bath for Xbox One. If we include the fact that the Xbox will be spying on you in the living room and most likely giving the data to the NSA it's obvious what we should all purchase. I's rather not have the NSA recording my living room.

jokoon 13y ago

yeah, you still have to hope it will be easy to program this stuff. and let's see the technical details on that too.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

ps4fanboy 13y ago

Can I trade them?

specto 13y ago

Online play seems to require Playstation Plus however. It seems they've followed Microsoft in this matter. So if your game is online, it could get interesting. Though from what I understand playstation plus gives steam level discounts to gamers on a console.

caw 13y ago
Indeed. It's not quite as cheap as steam (75% off), but if you keep your subscription up you'll get a bunch of free games that puts the subscription into "great deal" territory. I was on the fence about it for a long time, but after the second time my console died and lost all my game saves, I wanted the cloud save feature. It ends up that since I bought the PS Plus subscription, I actually haven't bought any games. I'm a infrequent gamer - I play games, but not every day. My back catalog of good games is pretty big, so there's a lot of good stuff that comes through the freebie channel. http://blog.us.playstation.com/2013/06/10/playstation-plus-e3-2013-sale-free-machinarium-uncharted-3-xcom-more/ http://blog.us.playstation.com/2013/06/10/playstation-plus-e.... If you scroll down you see the discounts on purchases. This month they gave out Uncharted 3, XCom, LBP Karting (I bought it when it was $10 for PS+ subscribers), and Deus Ex Human Revolution. Previously they've had Ratchet and Clank, Spec Ops: The Line, Sleeping Dogs, and a bunch of other big studio titles. If you bought just the titles for this month you'd spend at least $50, even at the cheapest retailers online.

apa-sl 13y ago

emmm, OK but Nintendo has already did that on Nintendo Wii U - inde dev can publish their game (after Nintendo's approval) without coping with any big publisher. It is funny how Nintendo is super innovative but often overlook (similar as Opera on the browsers market).

itafroma 13y ago
The Wii U didn't innovate on this: Sony has been allowing developers to self publish on the PS3 and PS Vita for some time now[1]. This is just a continuation of that policy into the next generation. Much of the news coming out of E3 for Sony has been "we're not changing our policies, unlike our competitor". [1]: http://us.playstation.com/develop/ http://us.playstation.com/develop/

kabdib 13y ago

It'll be interesting to see what kind of restrictions they'll have on account access, networking, DLC and so forth. Sony is infamous for saying things like this, then screwing people with the details.

dman 13y ago

Is getting a devkit getting any easier / cheaper? Apple got to where it was by opening up the ios development to everyone and not requiring an arcane process to become an approved developer.

teamonkey 13y ago
> not requiring an arcane process Xcode?

Zigurd 13y ago

This is another symptom that the marketing logic of consoles is off the rails. Consoles were closed devices because that's how console users could be made to pay for console hardware - through game prices. For a couple decades, the economics of this worked just fine. Until just recently, developing for a console market of a few tens of millions was far more lucrative than writing for any "open" games market. But now, with billions of smartphones, which amounts to a crushing ratio of 2.x orders of magnitude over consoles, games for smart mobile devices are making a serious dent - enough so that Microsoft led with their "old people" passive media features for Xbox One. It is an open question if the console economy can be sustained. Can enough be sold to make a viable market for game publishers? Hardcore gamers have PC gaming to fall back upon, so they will not save the consoles. The "living room PC" was always a loser, and it is hard to see how mixing that in with a console is now going to be a winner.

Goronmon 13y ago
But now, with billions of smartphones, which amounts to a crushing ratio of 2.x orders of magnitude over consoles, games for smart mobile devices are making a serious dent - enough so that Microsoft led with their "old people" passive media features for Xbox One. Do you have any evidence for this "serious dent" that smartphone gaming is having on the industry? I don't see how the smartphone game market overlaps with the same market that is purchasing an Xbox 360 or PS3. If anything, it overlaps the handheld market, but the Nintendo 3DS is still selling very well despite competing with smartphones for people's gaming dollars. For the "gaming" market (ie. people who play more than the occasional round of Solitaire or Angry Birds), smartphones are still underwhelming. Even take the Madden and CoD crowd that many gaming enthusiasts disparage. Why would they care about lackluster smartphone games? If anything the smartphone market aligns with those who bought a Wii for Wii Sports and then hardly used the thing much longer other than maybe as a Netflix device. But that was never a long-term market anyways. Plus, the smartphone gaming market seems to have a pricing issue where everyone expects games to be either free or $1. Can you imagine a game on the Google Play store costing $30+ dollars as they do for a 3DS or Vita? Let along $60 for a PS4 or Xbone One title?
- Zigurd 13y ago

coldarchon 13y ago

I can't believe they finally have a remake of Killer Insinct, put it exclusively on xbox one and you have to buy all characters except one ..