Probably because indies were never really on PSN much to begin with! Not worth mentioning.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Tim Schafer: Indies Moving Away From XBLA, Console Patches Cost $40,000
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
Probably because indies were never really on PSN much to begin with! Not worth mentioning.
It's quite possibly both, but they don't show the phrasing of the actual question, so I didn't want to risk putting words in his mouth that didn't seem to directly relate a la Castle Crashers, Dashboard, and Geometry Wars.
alexandros
Banned
It really was and I'm sure it will prove to be an even stronger player in the future.
I think the first. Since I rarely bother replaying games. I am greeted by buggy games constantly, that while I kindly buy day 1 to support devs.
I have stopped buying day 1 though.
Imp the Dimp
Member
Steam is so far ahead of XBL and PSN, it's ridiculous.
Such as Steam telling you when to release, what price they want to see, outright refusing to work with you. It's not like Steam is a magical place where everything Microsoft does doesn't exist.
NemesisPrime
Banned
SolarPowered
Member
The ball really is in Nintendo's court this year when it comes to small devs. Too bad Nintendo probably doesn't even know it has a court...
Support it. They might suggest pricing but I really doubt they dictate. Prove me wrong!
As for the others, I don't see an issue? They have standards and a calendar? Oh dear, those poor indie devs, they might want to take a trip to Adult Protective services!
In order to keep people talking about a game and to keep the community of people playing it alive (and hence increasing the likelihood of the game continuing to sell to new people who hear about it), there are a number of indie and non-indie games these days which tend to continue to update content for long periods of time post-launch. If it were to cost 40k to release each patch, it makes doing something like this unappealing. Which is why games like that find their home on Steam instead these days.
TyrantGuardian
Member
Haven't I been telling people that XBL is just a horrible service from the beginning? Anything requiring a friggin' subscription fee for basic functionality (playing games online) is seriously screaming "we operate based on sheer greed and nothing else!" to me. Having such a huge cost for fucking patches (that we've had for free since the first friggin' PC games were released) strikes me as a really odd business choice. Why wouldn't you want to increase the quality of your console's library over time?
fabricated backlash
Member
Even if this is just another voice to the choir... but holy shit, 40k for a mere patch?
Hot Coldman
Banned
$40k patches are pure greed.
Eaten By A Grue
Member
Natural Selection 2 updates like every 1-2 weeks on Steam. They would be bankrupt right now if Steam was charging.
But isn't there on XBL a pretty restrictive file size limit on updates so it's pretty much used for bug fixing. So that's hardly used for content updates?
BrokenSymmetry
Member
I used to be a big fan of Xbox Live (which started when playing PGR2), but I'm slowly getting to the point where I'm thinking of completely switching to Steam. These things build up slowly:
- The new games-unfriendly dashboard of Xbox (and its video-playback problems)
- The rigid price structure of Games on Demand
- List of new add-ons useless because of all music games add-ons and general useless DLC.
- The lack of updates on games in general, and XBLA games in particular
- XBox Indie games still not available in the Netherlands (and many other Xbox Live countries)
- General lack of content for most European countries
- Still no MMO games, despite all the years of promises that it will be the next big thing to have.
I'm not there yet (to leave Xbox Live behind), but if Steam finally releases its Big Picture mode it's a done deal!
There's very few games refused on Steam, and it's usually because they don't support the Steam overlay. The release date thing is a hell of a lot more lenient than XBLA, and I never heard them dicating price before. There needs to be some basic standards or the service goes to shit, but Valve has made sure those standards don't cripple the developer like XBLA has come close to doing more than once.
Also Dungeon Defenders patches every goddamn day pretty much. Enough is enough already. Those people need to be stopped honestly.
Yeah, if they didn't have some quality oversight Steam would quickly become an iOS style dumping ground.
It's part of why I want a 3rd generation humbling for Microsoft now that I think about it. Some of these policies are misguided at best, downright antagonistic at worst. Being kicked out of the comfort zone they're establishing would do a lot, like it did for Nintendo and Sony, even though I'm under no delusion they'd suddenly become PERFECT or anything given those two still have some very serious flaws.
Isn't Dungeon Defenders also on consoles? How do they cope, or are they exempt?
Sometimes people say stuff like, "The ability to patch at any time makes devs lazy and skimp on the QA", but that's ridiculous. I'm essentially a one-man team, here; I can't possibly justify the expense of all-out, months-long QA. If tens of thousands of people play my game, they're going to break shit, and I value the ability to immediately patch things exceptionally highly.
I guess what I'm saying is, <3 you Steam!
I can't say as I only have it on Steam.
Rygar 8 Bit
Jaguar 64-bit
*Gabe laughs*
Fucking rediculous that you have to pay 40,000 just to patch your own game.
You know he is talking about PSN and XBLA, right? Seems like a poor takeaway from only reading the thread title.
jediyoshi
Member
How do they sleep at night.
snoopeasystreet
Member
GFWL doesn't even allow patching unless a game sacrifices 10,000 save files.
fabricated backlash
Member
That's ridiculous at any rate.
It's important to remember that PC software is under no obligation to not wipe your hard disk. It doesn't matter if there's a buffer overflow, and if the game happens to allow you to run your own code, so what?
You can get away with a hell of a lot developing for PC, which you really can't on console. The manufacturers are so hell-bent on preserving ease and reliability of experience that it comes at a cost of flexibility.
That said, $40k does strike me as really, really high. I suspect there may be a deterrence built into the cost too?
There seems to have been a lot of updates on eShop on the 3DS recently. I wonder if any are non-Nintendo titles, and if so, I wonder if the pricing's proving fair - because if *anyone* is obsessed with preserving ease and reliability of experience, it's Nintendo.
Yeah, that's mosly the reasons why pc patching is more open.
Still, like you also said, the pricing is just ridiculous.
Sentenza
Member
That's really an idiotic statement for many reasons.
First of all them the fact that discouraging developers from releasing patches for their games doesn't make these games magically more polished, it just makes less likely to see the bugs fixed.
Also, there are plenty of reasons to eventually patch a game even if there aren't obvious bugs, maybe just to introduce new elements or improve features.
It's ironic how that 'deterrence' to stop broken or buggy games indirectly corrupted my Brutal Legend PS3 saves. Thanks Sony!
No wonder it took The Behemoth another year to build up the funds to patch up Castle Crashers.
I thought it was several thousand less but goddamn that fee is ludicrous amidst stuff like iOS and Steam. Microsoft needs a hard reset on so many things once they get to next gen.
I thought it was several thousand less but goddamn that fee is ludicrous amidst stuff like iOS and Steam. Microsoft needs a hard reset on so many things once they get to next gen.
fabricated backlash
Member
It's becoming more and more obvious that any company that aims to get a hold on Digital Distribution should really not look at XBL or PSN but rather at STeam and IOS.
40.000 for a patch, even if it is designed to be harmless for your console is just outrageous.
Are you basically paying a testing fee? If so, how many testers is Microsoft using on every patch?
40.000 for a patch, even if it is designed to be harmless for your console is just outrageous.
Are you basically paying a testing fee? If so, how many testers is Microsoft using on every patch?
CecilRousso
Member
Steam does refuse a lot of games, and according to devs they do so without giving a reason. but I don´t think we want Steam to be like App Store where the amount of clones and crappy freemium games is overflowing the place.
And while Steam does have restrictions, they are nowhere near those for XBLA.
And while Steam does have restrictions, they are nowhere near those for XBLA.
I rather a system that is very open and allows the largest number of games. The way to deal with crap is to have a good system of featuring good games.
Well, I'm not gonna talk about how PSN & XBLA suck compared to Steam 'cause I dont have a PS360, but I know Steam can - and do it - dictate pricing (Steam says for example to the publisher/dev' "if you want your game to be pushed on our plateform don't allow competitors to price it cheaper than our offer") and release dates (if a game is a full Steam DRM competitors need Steam keys to sell it: no pre-orders without a Steam "go" for example, or Steam can activate their keys and only activate later keys distributed throug competitors) in order to fuck competition.
It's regular bizness move. They're in a position to do that, so why not ?