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Platform X (aka Sony) and their relationship with indies

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bender

What time is it?


I think Sony's done a poor job with Indies after the first few years of the PS4, their focus definitely shifted. There is a lot of valid criticism around certification. The Steam sales do set off some alarm bells. Is the Xbox revenue coming from purchases or Gamepass. Nintendo is also interesting. Are these the games always on sale on that platform? To me, that is a problem. Nintendo's store runs so poorly and the on sale section usually has ~1,000 titles with certain titles always being heavily discounted as that is their way to get exposure. It just makes the end user experience miserable.
 

Nezzeroth

Member


Never heard of it.

ToEOBQm.png


Probably why.
 
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Kilau

Gold Member




I know that you are focused on the one complaint

I have no doubt getting listed on the store is more difficult than it should be, just dealing with your account management as a user can be a pain. The sheer amount of crap on the store tells me it isn't that hard though.
 
I think that if you want Sony to promote your game ( and its halfway decent) you would need to at a minimum make it a console exclusive.

Looking at this Hasan guy and his Abandoned game that has been promoted by sony , the only difference I see is that it is a PS5 exclusive.
 
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HTK

Banned
We only care about indies on PS Plus.

I just redeem them and never play.

So much truth to this. I honestly am not a big fan of PS+ and the games they offer. I haven't played a single PS+ game since they introduced PS+. Stuff that I did want was 3 years late, so all I do is redeem and never play...
 

Three

Member


Dear Iain Garner and IGN: Its not my favorite Indie Game.

P.s. Its a Business Plattform and not a social station. Of course ad places cost money.

Dear Iain Garner, Can you please tell me what my favourite indie game is since you seem to know but I don't.

what game is this guy referring to? I bet it's not even one I've heard of let alone my favourite. I get it, you get less exposure on Steam and Playstation compared to big games but at least tell me what game you're on about.
 

bender

What time is it?


Never heard of it.



I really hate the tactic of putting your game on sale every two months (I'm guessing this is a Nintendo enforced limit) in order to try and game the top sellers charts and sucker people into buying your game at full price once the sale ends.
 
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midnightAI

Member
Well this is certainly one way to promote your games. As the co-founder of a publisher (Neon Doctrine) not sure he should be bashing a major platform holder so publicly, if they was my publisher I'd be pissed at them not 'Platform X'
 
So, they're mad their indie games don't sell well on PlayStation?

PlayStation consoles attach rate is good. The problem is the amount of quality games on the platform. If you want your games to sell well on PlayStation, they need to be better games than the other choices available.

In short, make better games or shut up (preferably both).
 
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tmlDan

Member
So I read a few articles and that twitter thread and honestly this all seems normal.

Every company has a process of doing things and it will cost you either way. Saying how they cant get featured unless they are given the thumbs up by Sony is because Sony vets everything that comes through - isn't that ideal for the end consumer?

I've always seen Sony as taking the Apple approach, they like that their product is premium and they treat it like it is. If they didn't and some shovelware mobile crap was on their store it would be a shit storm that Xbox would NEVER get. Since the start of the last gen they have been scrutinized for every small thing for no reason - people just want to bring them down.

It's honestly like this in EVERY industry
 
Both things are simultaneously true.
Oh I agree that the PS store is absolute shit, BUT the key here is this Indie """"""""dev""""""""""" blaming a store front for his game's failure.

Let me tell you good indie games devs never need to go on twatter and "gaslight" store fronts cause their game that they shat out didn't sell 100 copies.

Ever heard of JoyMasher?
 
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Aion002

Member
Too much competition on Playstation.

When your small mobile like games has to compete with: acclaimed games, big studios annually games, the microtransactions galore from F2P games and the bigger indie games...

Well...

You Cant The Navy Comes Through GIF by Warner Archive


And PlayStation just has too much of those games in their plate... It's a pity, but understandable.
 

bender

What time is it?
He might have a salient point somewhere in there but he really just comes across as whiny that he can’t raise the profile of his work and blames it on how a store works.

If Sony limits the frequency at which you can put a product on sale, I see that as a positive, not a negative. Sony does allow for permanent price drops.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Unless you whine/complain on twitter, not sure you can get Sony to update its processes/system
Well some of this stuff is just stupid.. "They only highlight your game for free if they like it"..

Uhhhhh lol

"They have a way to pay for marketing"

OK?

And "They certify your game on all of the consoles it releases on!"

Uhh.. yeah? lol

He also seems to be whining about some of the free marketing they do give out, like trailers on their channel.. and a blog post (if they like your game).. WTF?
 
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Papacheeks

Banned
Indie devs are so whiny.

That being said sounds like some of Sony's systems are archaic and could use some automation.

When your this big, I dont think their ways are archaic, more or less imagine the big picture of how many deals, how many games they release on their store every month? It wasn't sony that had a bs indie clause for the longest time, until they started a better program over at xbox.
Sony for PS4 was the most open platform out of any of them. They literally and still do during state of play give indies a spot light. But now indies are so huge in the vastness of amounts of them, you have to filter out stuff that will not garner giant numbers.

Notice people like creators of The pathless, and the likes dont complain? He makes games that unfortunatly there are 10 more of similar in look or gameplay on steam/PSN. unless your making something very unique like sifu, stray, or very niche as in not many doing it then it's going to be a hard road.
Look at how many indie developers are doing cyberpunk aesthetic now? Look at how many demons souls clones there are now? So many indie games with same pixel art.

Market is gigantic now for indies it's not like it was in early PS4 days. It was expanding but, still there was room for new indies. Now?
Look at the state of steam it for a while was overrun with shit early access games that were not even games, on top of tons of dating sims, anime garbage and all that.
PSN has a similar problem that was seen during PS4, and this is how SOny deals with it. You want spotlight? If your game is legit great, unique and stands out I think they have no issues helping you out. If your game is very similar in genre/gameplay and look as 60% on steam/PSN then you need to pay up to have spotlight over something like Sifu/Stray/Kena/ neighbor games. Because those generate more buzz because they stand out.
 

elliot5

Member
The SDF out in full force. It's not that indies deserve success or that Sony should prop every indie up on a pedestal and shower them in free advertising. It seems that it's a problem with the Account Managers and the processes at Sony that create large headaches for these smaller developers. Manual excel invoicing? Months to respond? Having to speak to the manager to get answers? No launch discounts or pub driven discounting? C'mon. They're valid complaints and there are corroborating developers/publishers talking about it.

How can you have any desire to publish on PS if that large user base isn't giving you any ROI?

And yet some here will say paying Sony for cross play is because it's a PRIVILEGE to have access to such a user base lmao. They can't even get the privilege of PS users buying the game in the first place.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
When your this big, I dont think their ways are archaic, more or less imagine the big picture of how many deals, how many games they release on their store every month? It wasn't sony that had a bs indie clause for the longest time, until they started a better program over at xbox.

I'm talking about how you seem to need to track a person down to get things done, rather than submit things via some portal.. they also talked about how the sales data is shared in sending an excel file.

Those are the systems I'm talking about. Having to track down an account manager is just a process that doesn't really help anyone, Sony or the indies.
 
The SDF out in full force. It's not that indies deserve success or that Sony should prop every indie up on a pedestal and shower them in free advertising. It seems that it's a problem with the Account Managers and the processes at Sony that create large headaches for these smaller developers. Manual excel invoicing? Months to respond? Having to speak to the manager to get answers? No launch discounts or pub driven discounting? C'mon. They're valid complaints and there are corroborating developers/publishers talking about it.

How can you have any desire to publish on PS if that large user base isn't giving you any ROI?

And yet some here will say paying Sony for cross play is because it's a PRIVILEGE to have access to such a user base lmao. They can't even get the privilege of PS users buying the game in the first place.

The PlayStation Nation has no need for garbageware
iQsSvYL.gif
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
The SDF out in full force. It's not that indies deserve success or that Sony should prop every indie up on a pedestal and shower them in free advertising. It seems that it's a problem with the Account Managers and the processes at Sony that create large headaches for these smaller developers. Manual excel invoicing? Months to respond? Having to speak to the manager to get answers? No launch discounts or pub driven discounting? C'mon. They're valid complaints and there are corroborating developers/publishers talking about it.

Right; but this guy is still whiny.. you can't claim that first line is true, as that guy seams pissed about not getting free prominent exposure.. so this IS about that, partially.

He also is complaining about some things that sound legit archaic.
 
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bender

What time is it?
So the meltdown here is about them not able to sell enough copies, publishing on the store is hard and Sony just doesn't choose them for free exposure?

Fucking hysterical.




Oh...


He should bitch about Google. I looked for a Jack Axe review and this was the first result.



I'm going to use my indie game rainy day fund and buy me one of these killer axes.
 
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