8th Generation Countdown

[Shonumi]

(05-23-2013, 01:29 AM)MaJoR Wrote: Wrongo. The Playstation Store is now reaching out to devs (literally, they are calling devs) to get games onto the playstation ecosystem. The PS3, Vita, and PS4 are very indie friendly now. The Wii U has phenomenal indie development, which has recieved tremendous praise as being as good as steam, but on a console. Xbox? The Xbox 360 has gotten worse, not better. The Xbox Live Arcade is a ghost town, and developers have been left with a terrible taste in their mouths. And the XNA program has been cancelled, with no replacement forthcoming. And there is zero word about the Xbox One and Indies, though the Xbox One reveal barely mentioned games at all, so...

That's a bit misinformed, to say the least. Only up until very recently (like the past few months really) has the indie scene started to improve on Playstation platforms. The Vita no longer carries a mobile development fee and the PS4 will be indie friendly when it comes out (remember, it isn't out now, so it's not really an option). Getting an indie game on the PS3 was a needlessly complex and expensive process, which is why Sony is just now making an effort to show how different the Vita and PS4 will eventually be for indie games. They're making changes, but it's still a mess until those changes are enacted.

As it stands currently though (for consoles that are available) XBLA is fairly simple to get up and go for indie development, even though a lot of people are abandoning it. The Wii U and 3DS are far easier on indie devs than the Wii or DS were, but in terms of accessibility, it's still quite a bit of work to get yourself set to make games. Add in the cost of obtaining the development tools (most likely greater than the $99 Xbox Live Indie dev yearly membership). In terms of cost and ease of access, XBLA had it right, for a time at least. The Vita just became (imo) the best choice for indie development on hardware available today. Sure other companies allowed indie development, but MS threw you the least amount of hurdles to jump through. Permitting indie games on a system isn't enough; you have to make it simple without costing too much. MS hasn't said a word on indie development on the Xbox One, which is quite unfortunate.

[MayImilae]

Quote:Only up until very recently (like the past few months really) has the indie scene started to improve on Playstation platforms.

Well, I was talking about the current situation. New gen, gotta keep up.

Quote:XBLA had it right, for a time at least.

It was successful for a time, but it was mainly because it was the only option. The actual program itself was quite terrible. The store was always poor. You had to pay to get permission to submit updates, with many games keeping game killing bugs in place simply because it wasn't workable to spend cash on a 1kb update. XBLA was always in the background, and the majority of 360 owners don't even know what it is. This meant that sales were always poor, which kind of kills it's appeal as a store. You also forgot that there is a complicated greenlighting process. Even though the platform may be easy to develop for, actually getting it into the store is a pain in the ass. And Microsoft loves exclusivity agreements. Every developer I have read that has released something on the XBLA has come out of it with rants and ravings. I haven't seen any praise for the platform in years.

A dev actually coined a term for how friendly your platform is to new games. He called it the "Minecraft Test". Basically, if your platform could support a new and awesome game as it comes, then it's a good platform. Minecraft would have been unable to appear on the platform if Microsoft hadn't bended the update rules, and it only did that because Minecraft was already successful on the PC. WiiWare and XBLA both fail the Minecraft test.

Honestly, it's more important to have a good store and a good platform than it is to have an easy platform to develop for. I'll use iOS as an example. Apple has the worst policies for getting games onto the platform. Every game has to be checked by a human being before it can show up on iOS. Yet it is highly flexible, and once you're in, you're in, and you can update, change, do whatever without much care from Apple. And the store is actually good: People can find your apps and buy them. The same is true for Steam. Granted all platforms have their problems, and it's becoming increasingly easy to be lost in the shuffle, but both stores have taken measures to combat this. So yea, even though XBLA did some things right, it got some of the most important parts wrong.

[Shonumi]

It was successful for more than being the only option. Having hung around on GameDev.net for some time during XBLA's heydey, I can tell you it was a boon for programmers to have access to more or less the same tools PC-side that would be used for their Xbox game development (XNA). Couple this with the fact that you didn't have to pay through the nose to get them (unlike other SDKs), and you didn't even need Microsoft's permission to fiddle around with anything (except actually compiling it for the 360) before committing to the $99 membership to publish indie games. Additionally, lots of programmers were already familiar with C#, and XNA offered a chance to easily port a game to the PC as well. In my opinion, the above reasons were half the equation solved. In terms of porting, the PS* family has gotten to the point where you can write once, run it everywhere; Nintendo still makes you program separate versions for their handhelds and consoles.

In comparison to other indie dev programs, the barriers to entry were low. It was great for well-off studios that had been doing indie games for a while, but now it was possible for, say, a 5-man team of computer science undergrads to reasonably publish an indie game of their own. I can't say that about anything else today, except for the Vita. It's taken some time (read:a lot of time), but finally, one company gets it; that's how indie development should be on consoles and handhelds. The only part where a company should really "get in the way" is in the submission phase, where quality has to be assured. As for XBLA, it's MS' platform, their brand. They have a right to be assholes throughout the process, much as developers don't like it. Indie devs would go through much the same thing if they were publishing under a bigger game company (albeit the process would undoubtedly be longer). They'd probably have to deal with exclusivity agreements just as well, indie or not.

But hindsight has proven that MS did fall on the other half of the equation; I agree with you on the points about the store. It was probably hoping too much from MS to begin with, but at least they were the first ones to show that indie games on a console could be viable without requiring the developers to go through onerous hoops to even get started.

[lamedude]

XBLA good for indies? You have to sell out to the man i.e. you need a publisher. The fact you can self publish on PSN makes it better in my book since needing a middle man to move some bits is stupid. XBLIG is a cool concept (except for the online requirement) but its mostly crap and most Xbox users don't know it even exists.

[Shonumi]

(05-23-2013, 04:17 PM)lamedude Wrote: XBLA good for indies? You have to sell out to the man i.e. you need a publisher.

What do you mean by this? There are plenty of independent studios that are also the publishers of their indie games on XBLA. Some don't even have publishers; they're just put out there by independent development groups.

(05-23-2013, 04:17 PM)lamedude Wrote: The fact you can self publish on PSN makes it better in my book since needing a middle man to move some bits is stupid

The process for getting your game onto PSN, however, is no where near as simple as XBLIG was. All you had to do was get the membership, submit it, then wait for it to be reviewed. The only sticking point was the review process. With PSN, however, you really have to have your stuff together. You need to contact a representative from Sony, talk to them about your game, demonstrate you have some sort of plan (code, design documents, working demo, etc), hash out some agreements and/or licensing, and then you can get the go-ahead. You'll go through a similar process with Nintendo, presumably. Perhaps I'm spoiled with the ease that it takes to make a game and put it up on Apple's App Store or Google Play, but getting onto PSN is a serious business proposition. Sure the article I linked to says how easy the whole process is (and I can imagine a number of ways Sony could make it harder) but there are easier models to follow.

[lamedude]

Googling XBLA self publish brings a lot of not doable results but apparently you can rent one. Looks like MS doesn't have a problem doing it for you but for a fee of course ($40,000 to do a patch after they awesome QA job they did on the first one).

[MayImilae]

Hey, that was convenient. An article just popped up about this very topic.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-05-22-microsoft-wont-let-indies-self-publish-on-xbox-one
http://www.shacknews.com/article/79309/xbox-one-wont-allow-indies-to-self-publish-games

Eurogamer Wrote:In contrast to Sony with its PlayStation Store, Nintendo with its eShop and Valve with Steam, Microsoft won't let independent developers self-publish on Xbox One.

Instead, they must seek a publishing deal either with Microsoft itself or a third-party - as is the case with Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Arcade currently.

[Shonumi]

@lamedude - Most of the results I get that are relevant to the 360, XBLA, and indie dev all seem to go off of Rudolf Kremers' comments from around '11, the rest is flooded more recent results about the Xbox One (see MaJoR's links). Anyway, it was more than possible to self-publish on XBLA as an indie developer. Just look at a game like Flotilla, which was made by Blendo Games, essentially a one-man development studio. Again, there are other indie games on XBLA that were developed as well as published under independent studios. It doesn't seem very hard to get your own "studio" together and act as your own third-party.

@MaJoR - What's worse is that the XBLIG channel is being done away with altogether. They say they're not making a distinction anymore like they did in the past. Contrast this with Sony, who have just decided to create an indie games section. I get that MS wants to lump all of their games together, but ironically enough that doesn't treat indie developers like first-class developers. Sony's method, oth, is a lot better. Indie games thrive off of visibility and awareness, and giving them their own hub seems like the best way to do it. MS seems to like shooting its feet though, that or they like competing with handicaps.

[Invader]

So apparently, after the Xbox One announcement Wii U sales are up 386% in the UK.

Thanks Microsoft.

[ExtremeDude2]

wooooooooooooooooooooooooooot