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Jonathan Blow : "doing a deal with MS is an existential risk for your company & game"

I am sick of hearing how bad this guy and other Indies have it on xbla. Just today undead labs said they sold 250,000 second fastest ever on xbla. Their system fosters lots of great indie games. Just because PSN I'd good doesn't make xbla bad.

I use them both they both have great indie games. I like gucamelee better than state of decay but I meet the SoD developers at pax this year they are indie's and they seemed to be very happy with Ms.

I guess my point is that its his experience. Maybe he should mentor other Indies be positive instead of giving interviews to anyone who'll listen.
 
The uniformity of these complaints from multiple developers obviously means there is some truth to this. I understand why some people may have issues with a specific developer, but when these feelings are vocalized every few months, there sure is reason for concern if you intend to purchase an Xbox One.
 

idlewild_

Member
Thanks for that. Apparently they were driven close to bankruptcy. A lot of key people left, but Jenova Chen is there still.

Looking at wikipedia, seems they almost went bankrupt prior to releasing Journey due to the game taking 3 years and 14-18 people instead of the 1 year (and less people I guess?) originally planned.

I'm sure they're well off now that they have revenue from Journey plus the VC money. The 3 games they've released have been pretty decent, though pretty overhyped. Hopefully they can keep up the quality after the departures.
 
I've said this before and I'll say it again, Johnathon Blow has everything to gain to bash MS right now. He's releasing an "exclusive" game on the PS4, XBOne is it's direct competitor at launch, and one less XBOne sale -> is a potential PS4 sale -> is a potential Witness sale for him. Regardless if he's right or not, he's looking out for his best interest, so take his words with a gain of salt.
 

Mario

Sidhe / PikPok
I've said this before and I'll say it again, Johnathon Blow has everything to gain to bash MS right now. He's releasing an "exclusive" game on the PS4, XBOne is it's direct competitor at launch, and one less XBOne sale -> is a potential PS4 sale -> is a potential Witness sale for him. Regardless if he's right or not, he's looking out for his best interest, so take his words with a gain of salt.

If the inability of him to self publish on Xbox One in the first place makes witness a de facto console exclusive (it's coming to other platforms), what does he have to gain by bashing Microsoft exactly?

It's more like he doesn't have anything to lose.
 

Mrbob

Member
How does it work on the 360? Is a game like Telltale's walking dead not also basically selfpublished?

You have to have made some disc based games to publish on XBLA.

For example, take Trine 2. The developer FrozenByte was able to self publish the game on Steam. Which means they don't have to share the profits with a publisher. The XBLA version ( also PS3 version I believe since it came out before self publishing on Playstation became a thing) is published by Atlus. Which means they have to share their profits on these platforms with Atlus.

Self publishing is available on Wii U as well. So FrozenByte can keep all the profits of the Wii U version minus whatever cut Nintendo takes.

Having a digital publisher as a requirement isn't always needed. In fact, one could argue it is rarely needed. My theory is MS wants to keep gaming for the big boys alone and this is why they require an indie to hook up with a big publisher to release a game on XBLA.

It's a weird stance to take too. More than likely we will see come into play at E3, when the PS4 has a bunch of indie exclusives by default due to MS policy.
 
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