Saturday, June 02, 2007
Why Indies Can't Thrive On Consoles
There's an interesting opinion piece on GamaSutra entitled, "Why Indies Can't Thrive On Consoles." It goes into a lot more detail, but basically it comes down to the fact that the segregation of the market into so many platforms - which are very incompatable and require great pains to customize the game for each platform (and take advantage of its strengths) - exacerbate the marginal sales the indies get.
It sounds like its calling for some kind of standardized virtual machine on these high-end platform where indie games could be... uh... written once, played everywhere. Where have I heard that before?
That would be awesome. The chance of it actually happening amongst all three major console / handheld manufacturers? Somewhere very close to zero.
Labels: Indie Evangelism, Mainstream Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:30 AM (Permalink)
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I call BS on that article. His indie filmmaker analogy doesn't hold. While a filmmaker will have to "port" every movie he makes, a game developer will only need to port his code once to each system and can reuse that portable code on future titles. Or if the developer licenses an engine, there are many that are portable on a few consoles.
Having said that, I think having a game on multiple consoles is good in the short term for the developer, but bad in the longterm for the platform (which in effect is bad for the developer). It waters down the "specialness" of a particular system. If all games are available on all systems, no system is unique and specifically worth buying.
This was exactly the downfall of the PSP. There are a few good exclusive titles, but it's mostly, especially in the consumer's eyes, a port dumping ground.
Having said that, I think having a game on multiple consoles is good in the short term for the developer, but bad in the longterm for the platform (which in effect is bad for the developer). It waters down the "specialness" of a particular system. If all games are available on all systems, no system is unique and specifically worth buying.
This was exactly the downfall of the PSP. There are a few good exclusive titles, but it's mostly, especially in the consumer's eyes, a port dumping ground.
Your PSP analogy is a good one.
While I'd love to see something like this happen, I can't see it being a real win for the manufacturers. An interesting thing to notice: As consoles mature, game sales begin to resemble the PC market. The console becomes saturated with titles... as the PC always is.
While I think most consumers would differentiate between lower-end indie titles and the major AAA releases, it would also serve to saturate the console all that much faster with lower-end indie titles. To avoid that, the console manufacturers would just have to work extra-hard to only let the cream of the crop through... which would result in things being no more open than they are now.
While I'd love to see something like this happen, I can't see it being a real win for the manufacturers. An interesting thing to notice: As consoles mature, game sales begin to resemble the PC market. The console becomes saturated with titles... as the PC always is.
While I think most consumers would differentiate between lower-end indie titles and the major AAA releases, it would also serve to saturate the console all that much faster with lower-end indie titles. To avoid that, the console manufacturers would just have to work extra-hard to only let the cream of the crop through... which would result in things being no more open than they are now.
call me paranoid, but I can't imagine "the big 3" all that eager to have the console market open substantially to Indies and lose what controls they do have.
I mean if you're a AAA studio financer, aren't you just a little bit annoyed when your 6-year-8 million-dollar-game-investment can have a lower ROI than 3 guys working in their underwear in a basement?
long live Tucker.
I mean if you're a AAA studio financer, aren't you just a little bit annoyed when your 6-year-8 million-dollar-game-investment can have a lower ROI than 3 guys working in their underwear in a basement?
long live Tucker.
No, me neither. Though I think they could make it work for them with a change in strategy. But at least things are opening up somewhat. But you'd have to make a really solid business case for them to do what the article calls for, and I don't know that anybody is prepared to do that.
I think that it is particularly ironic that EA VP of Communication loudly proclaimed (in not so many words) in 2005 that this generation of hardware would be the death knell for small, budget titles on the consoles... yet its been very much the opposite. EA itself has joined in the fray, with their Pogo.com subsidiary.
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I think that it is particularly ironic that EA VP of Communication loudly proclaimed (in not so many words) in 2005 that this generation of hardware would be the death knell for small, budget titles on the consoles... yet its been very much the opposite. EA itself has joined in the fray, with their Pogo.com subsidiary.
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