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Platform X (aka Sony) and their relationship with indies

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onesvenus

onesvenus

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So, I found this Twitter thread where an indie developer is talking bad about the relationship a platform holder has with indies.



Lots of other indie developers quoting the thread and agreeing with what's being said.

One of those is this which claims only 3% of their sales are on platform X despite having a much larger userbase



He even says they earn more money with Google ads than sales on Platform X

Things that surprised me are not having the ability to discount your own game or having to pay 25000$ to get featured.

I have to say I don't know how Microsoft, Nintendo or Steam operate their shops but with so many developers talking bad about platform X way of doing it I'd expect to be much better.

Kotaku and Forbes have published articles regarding this
kotaku.com

Sony Charging Devs At Least $25,000 For PlayStation Store Visibility

PSN makes getting noticed far too expensive for indies
kotaku.com kotaku.com

www.forbes.com

Dev Details Sony’s Frustrating Rules For Discounts And Promotion On PlayStation

A developer is taking Sony to task for how hard it is to promote or price games on PS4 or PS5.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com


P.S.: seeing fanboys of the other plastic box talking to them and saying how sorry they are and promoting id@xbox is crazy

Edit: Added Kotaku and Forbes posts
 
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kretos

kretos

Banned
giphy.gif


we only care about blockbusters, i don't know who these people are and don't care enough to google their games
 
Nezzeroth

Nezzeroth

Member
onesvenus said:
Click to expand...

What that chart tells me is that the two platforms with the most amount of games (Steam and PlayStation) are the ones where they're struggling. Which seems completely normal.

The twitter thread is more interesting though and aligns with what other developers have said about poor comunication. Looks like Sony only cares about indies when they're not swimming in that AAA money.
 
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AdjudicatorHead

AdjudicatorHead

Member
Why do indie devs expect the leading platform holder to give them free promotion without any work, just because they’re indie devs? Sony do plenty of promoting indies when they’ve made something special that Sony deem will be very interesting to their fans. You’re not getting free promotion for some generic mobile game-looking clone; Sony have far too much demand to be doing that.

Do you expect the supermarket to give prominent shelf space to a product which isn’t popular with the majority of their shoppers, just because it’s made by a small business?
 
R

reksveks

Member
AdjudicatorHead said:
Why do indie devs expect the leading platform holder to give them free promotion without any work, just because they’re indie devs? Sony do plenty of promoting indies when they’ve made something special that Sony deem will be very interesting to their fans. You’re not getting free promotion for some generic mobile game-looking clone; Sony have far too much demand to be doing that.

Do you expect the supermarket to give prominent shelf space to a product which isn’t popular with the majority of their shoppers, just because it’s made by a small business?
Click to expand...
think there are also the store rules that seem stupid (why does sony need to be aware of a dev's launch promotion? i don't get it) and the account management seems also lacking
 
DrAspirino

DrAspirino

Banned
AdjudicatorHead said:
Do you expect the supermarket to give prominent shelf space to a product which isn’t popular with the majority of their shoppers, just because it’s made by a small business?
Click to expand...
Actually yes. In fact, thanks to covid, most of my country's chain supermarkets are promoting first and foremost products that come from small-medium producers in order to help them survive. Same can be said about virtual storefronts.

Jfc.. how far are you guys willing to go to defend these kind of disdain to small devs by your favorite plastic box maker?
 
AdjudicatorHead

AdjudicatorHead

Member
DrAspirino said:
Actually yes. In fact, thanks to covid, most of my country's chain supermarkets are promoting first and foremost products that come from small-medium producers in order to help them survive. Same can be said about virtual storefronts.

Jfc.. how far are you guys willing to go to defend these kind of disdain to small devs by your favorite plastic box maker?
Click to expand...
Think you might have missed something…
AdjudicatorHead said:
Do you expect the supermarket to give prominent shelf space to a product which isn’t popular with the majority of their shoppers, just because it’s made by a small business?
Click to expand...
Also, supermarket chains don’t do things out of kindness, like every business.
 
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martino

martino

Member
Kuranghi said:
Episode 5 Reaction GIF by The Office


I know english isn't your first language so not trying to make fun, I just have no idea what you are talking about and would like to know.
Click to expand...
sorry i translated an expression that probably doesn't work.
my bet is he will release his games on ps5...even for a handful of sales
and it's also because porting is not the effort it was decades ago
 
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F

FatKingBallman

Banned
onesvenus said:
I have to say I don't know how Microsoft, Nintendo or Steam operate their shops but with so many developers talking bad about platform X way of doing it I'd expect to be much better.
Click to expand...

Oh, yes you know surely since you linked Kotaku's article??

From official paperwork we’ve seen, those fees can reach six figures for just a weekend’s promotion. We’re also told that Microsoft runs similar payment schemes for the Xbox store. Of course, for big publishers this is just another number on a multi-million marketing spreadsheet, the costs of doing business. But for independent developers and publishers, working on total budgets more likely in five figures or less, it’s absolutely unaffordable. For so long as major platforms release both sorts of games on the same terms, having them directly compete against one another, Garner’s will be just one of thousands of frustrated stories of finding it impossible to get any attention at all.
Click to expand...
 
R

reksveks

Member
Iamborghini said:
There are so many games and so many publishers/developers, so why Sony is supposed to promote HIS game and not from another indie dev?
I don't see the problem here, tell me what I missing.
Click to expand...
the other complaints he has from lack of transparency, lack of feedback, some weird policies about discounts
 
yurinka

yurinka

Member
Obviously percentages change for each company and game, but over 1500 million games have been sold for PS4, way more than for Switch or Xbox. And sure, like in any platorms a big % of them are from a few dozen best selling companies.

But other than that, if they released their games on all platforms and with similar discounts, and at the same time, thier games aren't utter garbage and made a minum and decent marketing and PR effort (I assume these guys did a decent job with what they could with their humble resources), it's hard to believe the PS sales for them are that small compared to the other ones unless their sales are so abysmal in general, to the point that aren't representative.

I'm and indiedev with many indiedev friends in dozens of studios, and in some cases PS it's the lead platform for some, for other ones not but even if smaller is still pretty similar to the other ones.

Yes, for sure it's difficult to get visibility like in any other store, specially for random indies in the most successful platform where there are more great releases. Yes, in this platform is more difficult to get attention from the platform holder since there are tons of other more important devs already asking for the same. Yes, there's a lot of dumb paperwork and it sucks. Yes, it sucks to have all these checklists and subsmissions when they could optimize all this into a single, way simpler submission.

But these percentages don't seem to be realistic, or at least aren't common for indie devs.
 
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llLeonhart

llLeonhart

Member
Oh come on, entitled devs will be entitled. A quick glance at both of these publishers there's absolutely nothing remarkable about any of their games. Why would they want any platform to boost their stuff for free on an incredibly saturated market?

Develop really unique and fun stuff, and you don't need any platform to do free adverts for your game.
 
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