Sony’s goal is to provide the best place to play, but there are always bumps in the road. Last year, the company was taken to task for its treatment of indie developers, with many citing poor promotion of its games and an obnoxious certification process as reasons why they’d rather release elsewhere. To be fair to the firm, it’s responded to feedback – in fact, even earlier today it launched a new Let’s Play series dedicated to spotlighting smaller products in its portfolio.
And now the company has announced a hardware loan programme, which will provide eligible game developers and publishers with a PS5 development kit and a PS5 testing kit, compliments of the company. While this may sound like a small gesture, it’s a potentially meaningful one: purchasing the requisite hardware to test and publish games on PlayStation can be a bottleneck, and this at least gives teams in that position a helping hand.
What does all this mean for you? Well, ultimately, more games to play, which is great. “We are always striving to lower the barrier of entry and improve the process for publishing on PlayStation,” said PlayStation Creators chief Greg Rice. “We’re pleased to announce a new initiative that will make it easier for new partners to hop in and get started with developing for PlayStation.”
In this day and age, you can never be sure where the next major hit will come from – after all, who would have predicted success stories like Rocket League [We did - Ed] and Fall Guys? Sony does still have a problem ensuring the absolute best content published on the PS Store filters to the top, but breaking down barriers so that more developers can release on the console is still a positive thing, so kudos to the company for introducing this initiative.
[source sie.com]
Comments 22
This is a smart and laudable move. We need Sony making more moves like this to help developers. They need to interact with fans more as well, but I'll take a step in the right direction for now.
I've been very pleased with the indies Playstation has chosen to promote lately. Rocket League and Fall Guys of course come to mind but then you also have had Kena Bridge of Spirits, Anno Mutationem, and soon Rollerdrome.
They have a good thing going and this can only help so good on them.
@Korgon Yeah, they've picked some really good ones lately. I'd say the sheer quantity of indies they promote has in a way been ceded to other platform holders, but they do seem to unearth real gems that end up being big hits. Like you say, Stray and Kena are great recent examples.
This is great.
Inside and Limbo are in my top 10 of all time great games, so to see this is very satisfying.
Great news. I just started playing Dungeon of naheulbeuk. A fun indie isometric dungeon crawler. The more the merrier.
Good, I really hope they use Plus Extra format to bring more indies and double AAs to the light, some of the best games ive played last gen (and so far this gen) fall under that banner.
@BeerIsAwesome To be fair, part of the reason it's now owned by Epic was its huge launch on PS Plus (published by Devolver at that point).
Cool n.i.c.e. word up son
They should’ve never stopped supporting indie’s. They’re the only ones innovating atm.
Oh god, please don't give PS5 devkits to Breakthrough, Random Spin, or any other garbageware devs that don't already have one.
Very nice. More of this, please, Sony. Just watch out for shovelware developers or we'll have another Switch eShop on our hands.
When it comes to correcting the shameful way Sony has treated indies over the last few years, it’s a start at least.
Great news to hear, the world can always use some more lovely indies.
@Sakisa Was about to say the same thing - New Sony's treatment of the indie scene was truly abhorrent.
A lot have left for the Switch now so while it's good to see Sony mending the gates, the horses are some miles away by now.
@sanderson72 I don't know why you say this, but every worthwhile indie is also on PS platforms, apart from that 2d isometric one, I forgot its name, sorry.
I mean, every good indie that released on Xbox, also came or will come to PS, The Ascent, Tunic, Death's Door.
PS still has some Indie games which are exclusive on the console space, The Pathless, SIFU, Stray, Salt and Sacrifice, etc.
@Sil_Am I say this because the PS4 was '4 the players' and heavily supported and encouraged indies.
PS5 era seemed to shoot them down in no uncertain terms and now tries building bridges to bring them back but some will not trust PS again. It's another instance of New Sony (Ryan) making a bad decision and then trying to back peddle (e.g. Japan Studio closure followed by 'we're supporting Japanese devs - honest!' even though they've gone to mobile/Switch)
Hard to take this 'criticism' seriously for whenever Sony does a State of Play or PlayStation Showcase, the most common complaint I see in these Comment Sections is "They showed too many Indies & AA Games", and let's not forget how much flack Sony got during the first 3 years of the PS4's lifecycle for how heavily they relied and supported Indies, but I guess people have selective memories and forgot the barrage of 'IndieStation' hate comments that were made.
So we love Indies and then we hate Indies depending on which one benefits everyone's dumba$$ narrative of the week, good to know.
@JustPlainLoco when the people who run the site are so often looking for reasons to be critical or 'put the boot in', its no surpise that the site attracts people that are only happy if they are complaining.
They suck any joy out of this hobby, Id hate to meet them in real life, and wish we we didnt have to hear them whining here.
This is a story about a positive move that supports devs, and deserves to be seen in a positive light. Critiscm of past moves would only be relevant here if this was something Sony previously stopped doing and were now reintroducing, but thats not the case.
Some sad people will use any story to grind whatever axe they have. This site actively encorages them.
@Sil_Am There are plenty of indies on Switch, but not PS. Here's just a few of the more notable ones:
Inmost, Everhood, Unavowed, Eastward, Steel Assault, The Legend of Tian Ding, Dark Deity, Panzer Paladin
None that I heard of or would interest me, apart of Eastword. My point was proven. The notable indies are also on PS.
This is excellent news as that kit can be prohibitively expensive to acquire! Kena, Stray and a coupla others have done well, and not just because they look good, they've brought something different to the table which can only be good for the industry. The 'big' devs are too focused on perpetuating franchises which leaves them scared to innovate. Either that or their just complacent, or a mix of both, as I strongly suspect is the case with polyphony these days.
Damn good move..i really like the indie scene and a lot of the games i've spent most of my time on have been indies..the salt and sanctuary games,kena,hades and i've just purchased lost epic today and i'm hooked on it already..sonys caught a lot of flack recently but this is a brilliant move..bravo.
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