
Sony will allow indie devs to publish their own games on PlayStation 4 - jeffreyfox
http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/10/sony-will-allow-indie-devs-to-publish-their-own-games-on-playstation-4/
======
Smerity
I'd be immensely wary of Sony declaring themselves open to indie devs. When I
was a teenager I did homebrew development on the Sony PSP. Sony did every
damned thing in their power to stop it. To run homebrew, you had to either run
an older version of firmware or root the device. Every time an exploit was
patched, a new one was found. This inevitably meant a lot of people spent a
lot of time rooting the PSP[1]. I was impressed with how the security of the
device fell time and time again to the community.

If Sony just allowed the PSP to run homebrew games, they'd not be in such a
mess. Many of the developers rooting the devices just wanted to run their own
software, but the shadow community would use that result to pirate games.
Separating the two communities by allowing homebrew software on their device
would have made sense for their own protection.

This was then followed up by the PS3. After releasing with both the ability to
run Linux, they removed both. You paid for a device with X, then they removed
X. Understandably the community became somewhat irate. Eventually their
private signing key for their entire console was leaked due to the desire to
allow homebrew and to restore OtherOS (Linux) support[2]. Sony's legal
department tried to fix that...

So, from all this past history, I wouldn't trust Sony's new direction. At the
very least not until they start to act on their new found conviction.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable#Homebrew](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable#Homebrew)

[2]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz#Hacking_the_PlaySta...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz#Hacking_the_PlayStation_3)

Edit: Thanks for Dylan16807 correcting me re: PS2 emulation. Having a deeper
read into it, the situation is confusing -- some models have hardware PS2
support, others do emulation, and then it was completely dropped whilst "PS2
Classics" (recompiled or via emulation) were released on the PS3 as pay for
downloads.

~~~
onedev
If you watched the announcement I think you can get a sense that Sony has
learned a lot from their past. You can tell that they cared about the people
that they made this product for.

Something really striking about this whole Xbox One vs PS4 thing is how one
sided the enthusiasm is (in favor of the PS4). It's all the more striking when
you consider that the gaming community is one of the most passionate, fickle,
and hardest-to-please bunch of people there are.

I think Sony really listened to what people really wanted and made something
with those things in mind.

Just gauging the reactions from across the internet and from across my diverse
group of friends, the PS4 is being received so incredibly well and the
sentiment towards the Xbox One is exactly the opposite.

~~~
ekianjo
> the PS4 is being received so incredibly well and the sentiment towards the
> Xbox One is exactly the opposite.

It's probably because Sony hasn't said anything yet about their used game
policy. I would seriously doubt they don't get publishers get their way on the
Sony console as well just as they did on the Xboxone. Unless they want to
shoot themselves in the foot and lose publishers support.

~~~
shardling
Go look at the number one thread in r/gaming right now.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming)

[http://imgur.com/ymUneDP](http://imgur.com/ymUneDP)

~~~
heurist
Sony may have won out of the established competitors but the Oculus Rift will
be coming out this generation too. Given the support it has so far I don't
doubt that it will become a major competitor, so it's too early to say Sony
'won'.

~~~
freehunter
As far as I know, the Oculus Rift isn't really a competitor in that it's not a
console. It's not stand-alone. Doesn't it require a gaming PC to actually
power the display? In that sense, it's not the Oculus Rift that's a new
competitor, it's that the old competitor (PC gaming) has just gotten a new
innovation.

------
jebblue
Remember how PS 3 let users load their own Linux then a year or two later they
sent out a firmware update that turned it off. Like imagine buying a car then
the dealership sends a rep over and takes the nice stereo out and installs a
cheaper model...but doesn't give you a refund, or a choice. And this stood up
in court?

~~~
_pmf_
> Remember how PS 3 let users load their own Linux then a year or two later
> they sent out a firmware update that turned it off.

It's unfortunate that the attention span of most users is as short. Aside from
the Linux issue, the PS3 was decidedly hostile towards small game companies
for a very long time (ridiculous development system costs, year long approval
process etc.).

~~~
pandaman
Source? I don't know of any small company that actually paid for devkits
either from Sony or MS. Year long approval would cost hundreds thousand that
small companies are not likely to afford.

------
drawkbox
PS4 more like an appstore, the war of consoles has already been won.
Congratulations Sony.

Companies like Halfbrick, Rovio, Firemint, Pixelbite and many many more were
made by an open market on mobile. I am excited to see what games will pop up
on PS4. They already had better indie exclusives like Joe Danger, Fat Princess
and more. Good times ahead for gaming on the PS4.

What I don't get is being open appstores attracts developers and sells more
hardware and subsequently more games. Why would Microsoft shut that down?
Bigger economies always sell more.

~~~
adventured
Microsoft has a very long history of screwing up once they get on top. They're
great when they're the underdog doing the chasing, they tend to catch up over
time. Once they finally build a great product, you can almost always count on
them royally screwing it up. Then the process starts all over again.

~~~
freehunter
It tends to be Microsoft dumping money into something to gain their top
status, then once they try to make a profit on it they mess up. Their profit
maximization formula doesn't seem to have a field for "will this lose
customers?"

------
Zigurd
This is another symptom that the marketing logic of consoles is off the rails.
Consoles were closed devices because that's how console users could be made to
pay for console hardware - through game prices.

For a couple decades, the economics of this worked just fine. Until just
recently, developing for a console market of a few tens of millions was far
more lucrative than writing for any "open" games market. But now, with
billions of smartphones, which amounts to a crushing ratio of 2.x _orders of
magnitude_ over consoles, games for smart mobile devices are making a serious
dent - enough so that Microsoft led with their "old people" passive media
features for Xbox One.

It is an open question if the console economy can be sustained. Can enough be
sold to make a viable market for game publishers? Hardcore gamers have PC
gaming to fall back upon, so they will not save the consoles. The "living room
PC" was always a loser, and it is hard to see how mixing that in with a
console is now going to be a winner.

~~~
Goronmon
_But now, with billions of smartphones, which amounts to a crushing ratio of
2.x orders of magnitude over consoles, games for smart mobile devices are
making a serious dent - enough so that Microsoft led with their "old people"
passive media features for Xbox One._

Do you have any evidence for this "serious dent" that smartphone gaming is
having on the industry?

I don't see how the smartphone game market overlaps with the same market that
is purchasing an Xbox 360 or PS3. If anything, it overlaps the handheld
market, but the Nintendo 3DS is still selling very well despite competing with
smartphones for people's gaming dollars.

For the "gaming" market (ie. people who play more than the occasional round of
Solitaire or Angry Birds), smartphones are still underwhelming. Even take the
Madden and CoD crowd that many gaming enthusiasts disparage. Why would they
care about lackluster smartphone games?

If anything the smartphone market aligns with those who bought a Wii for Wii
Sports and then hardly used the thing much longer other than maybe as a
Netflix device. But that was never a long-term market anyways.

Plus, the smartphone gaming market seems to have a pricing issue where
everyone expects games to be either free or $1. Can you imagine a game on the
Google Play store costing $30+ dollars as they do for a 3DS or Vita? Let along
$60 for a PS4 or Xbone One title?

~~~
Zigurd
First, you are right that smart mobile devices have the most direct impact on
handhelds which were a niche within a niche already.

Second, I can't imagine a game on Google Play costing $30, never mind $60. Can
you imagine a world without $30 games?

Third, those $30-60 games are only possible inside the closed console market.
In this context, the idea of indy games on consoles is just strange: It is
contrary to the way the console market works.

The point is that if smart mobile devices on one side, and gaming PCs on the
other side peel away enough of the market, 8th generation consoles will
continue the decline in unit volume that happened in the 7th generation, and
lead to the end of console gaming.

You are comparing high end FPS games against casual games. When, in reality,
console games are divided between dozens of genres. If everything else -
fighting games, strategy games, CRPGs, simulation games, etc. are all fine on
handsets and/or tablets, it's the end of consoles.

------
TillE
We still don't have any real details, mind. This could be anything from a
fully open app store model to Steam's arbitrarily selective approval.

~~~
wmf
When they say they will allow X it means they will allow exactly X and no
more, so I'm sure there will be approval. But developers may get to keep ~70%
instead of ~30%.

------
InclinedPlane
It's hard to say how this will work out, but compared to Microsoft who has
seemed to expend a tremendous amount of effort crapping all over indie game
devs it's hard to see this as anything other than very promising.

------
greghinch
I wonder if this is actually a good idea? Seems similar to one of the major
things that led to the "Video Game Crash of 1983"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_cras...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983#Loss_of_publishing_control)

~~~
vinkelhake
Isn't it essentially the situation we've had with Xbox Live Indie Games and
most of the games in Apple's/Google's app stores?

There's a tremendous amount of trash on those marketplaces. I haven't seen any
indications that it would lead to a crash.

~~~
greghinch
Probably not a crash for the market as a whole, but certainly not a good idea
for a company who's console is struggling against the competition.

~~~
georgemcbay
One of the major reasons I'm ditching the Xbox (I owned an Xbox and own two
Xbox 360s) is because of the PS4's much clearer focus on supporting indie
games.

And yes, I realize for every The Witness or Braid there will be 20 or more
pieces of crap, but this isn't 1982 where we are trying to figure out what to
buy based solely on cover art. We have the Internet, the stuff worth paying
attention to will be filtered up to the masses with or without Sony's explicit
help.

------
mkhattab
Yes, but what about the SDK costs? I believe special development hardware was
required for PS3 development which had/has a cost of around $10k. If Sony is
offering similar pricing for the PS4 SDK then what's the point of indie
publishing?

~~~
wmf
IIRC Sony gives free SDKs to indie stars. The full process is:

1\. Develop/release indie game on Windows.

2\. Sell a lot of copies (relatively speaking).

3\. Sony gives you free SDK.

4\. Release indie game on PS3/4.

5\. For your second game (e.g. Transistor, The Witness) you can develop for
PS4 in parallel with Windows because you already have the SDK.

~~~
eropple
That's not the PSVita process. I have a hunch this'll be a lot closer to the
Vita process than that.

~~~
workbench
Can you enlighten us to the Vita process?

I've dabbled with iOS games but found it a tad boring as I love games with
proper controls so the possibilities of this excite me.

~~~
eropple
It's rather similar to mobile development:

[http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/PlayStation+Vita/news.as...](http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/PlayStation+Vita/news.asp?c=50745)

I haven't personally done it (though I'm considering trying it for a small-ish
project) so I can't speak to how many hassles there are.

------
apa-sl
emmm, OK but Nintendo has already did that on Nintendo Wii U - inde dev can
publish their game (after Nintendo's approval) without coping with any big
publisher. It is funny how Nintendo is super innovative but often overlook
(similar as Opera on the browsers market).

~~~
itafroma
The Wii U didn't innovate on this: Sony has been allowing developers to self
publish on the PS3 and PS Vita for some time now[1]. This is just a
continuation of that policy into the next generation. Much of the news coming
out of E3 for Sony has been "we're not changing our policies, unlike our
competitor".

[1]: [http://us.playstation.com/develop/](http://us.playstation.com/develop/)

------
bichiliad
Depending on how open this is, this could conceivably make Ouya obsolete.

~~~
kayoone
imo the Ouya is pretty much obsolete. Current gen smartphones are more
powerful and coupled with an HDMI cable and a bluetooth controller (from the
PS3 for example) offer the same thing plus are portable.

Ouya is all about its own Store and ecosystem, games built for their
system/controller etc and also its low price point. I still think it will have
a hard time.

~~~
sp332
Current gen smartphones are 3x more expensive once you add a game controller.
That's a pretty massive difference in market.

~~~
kayoone
true, but the ouya target demographic likely has a smartphone anyway. Most of
the mass market will probably never hear about the Ouya.

------
Fuxy
I'm so enjoying this... It's going to be a blood bath for Xbox One. If we
include the fact that the Xbox will be spying on you in the living room and
most likely giving the data to the NSA it's obvious what we should all
purchase.

I's rather not have the NSA recording my living room.

------
specto
Online play seems to require Playstation Plus however. It seems they've
followed Microsoft in this matter. So if your game is online, it could get
interesting. Though from what I understand playstation plus gives steam level
discounts to gamers on a console.

~~~
caw
Indeed. It's not quite as cheap as steam (75% off), but if you keep your
subscription up you'll get a bunch of free games that puts the subscription
into "great deal" territory.

I was on the fence about it for a long time, but after the second time my
console died and lost all my game saves, I wanted the cloud save feature. It
ends up that since I bought the PS Plus subscription, I actually haven't
bought any games. I'm a infrequent gamer - I play games, but not every day. My
back catalog of good games is pretty big, so there's a lot of good stuff that
comes through the freebie channel.

[http://blog.us.playstation.com/2013/06/10/playstation-
plus-e...](http://blog.us.playstation.com/2013/06/10/playstation-
plus-e3-2013-sale-free-machinarium-uncharted-3-xcom-more/). If you scroll down
you see the discounts on purchases.

This month they gave out Uncharted 3, XCom, LBP Karting (I bought it when it
was $10 for PS+ subscribers), and Deus Ex Human Revolution. Previously they've
had Ratchet and Clank, Spec Ops: The Line, Sleeping Dogs, and a bunch of other
big studio titles. If you bought just the titles for this month you'd spend at
least $50, even at the cheapest retailers online.

------
FatalBaboon
In a time when the freedom on internet is top news and highly controversial,
he who sells freedom is in a lucrative business.

If Sony does maintains significant advantage on the freedom of its users, they
will crush Microsoft. It's not even going to be funny.

------
z3phyr
Will they be shipping something like XNA? Will they be using C# or other
managed languages at engine level?

------
dman
Is getting a devkit getting any easier / cheaper? Apple got to where it was by
opening up the ios development to everyone and not requiring an arcane process
to become an approved developer.

~~~
teamonkey
> not requiring an arcane process

Xcode?

------
kabdib
It'll be interesting to see what kind of restrictions they'll have on account
access, networking, DLC and so forth.

Sony is infamous for saying things like this, then screwing people with the
details.

------
seanp2k2
Welp, I know what console I'm buying next. I haven't purchased a gaming
console since the very first PS2s that hit eBay before xmas that year, but I
think it's once again time.

------
jokoon
yeah, you still have to hope it will be easy to program this stuff. and let's
see the technical details on that too.

------
KingLot
Relevant. "We're Indie, we like Microsoft. Too Controversial?"

[http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesSilva/20130523/192832/Were_I...](http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesSilva/20130523/192832/Were_Indie_we_like_Microsoft_Too_Controversial.php)

~~~
eropple
That the guy who has been getting what amounts to fairly special treatment
since the jump (with The Dishwasher) likes the guys who created his meal
ticket is not terribly surprising.

(Not saying he's wrong to feel that way, but his biases are stark.)

