Interesting article. They also talk about indies and different consoles:
Having heard some indies at GDC talking about skipping Xbox and PlayStation because there just isn’t much of an audience for indies on those platforms if you can’t get included in their subscription services, we ask Lowrie about how healthy the console ecosystems are for indies these days.
He echoes the indies we heard from in acknowledging that Switch stands apart from Xbox and PlayStation on this front.
“They’ve created an ecosystem – and therefore a user base – that is really open to interesting concepts and gameplay ideas,” Lowrie says of Nintendo. "The PlayStation and Xbox user, for as long as I’ve been doing this… there’s a lot of people that still like indie games, don’t get me wrong. Cult of the Lamb has done very well on those platforms. But I think the large majority of those people buy those platforms to show off what they can really do. They’re looking at Destiny. They’re looking at Helldivers. They’re looking at Starfield. They definitely push those.
“I think the platforms themselves all are really strong believers in indie games. They really do push them. I think on the other end, the consumers – as big as they might be – there’s still a smaller portion than we would like on Xbox and PlayStation that are open to looking at a pixel art platformer and going, ‘I’ll give this a shot.’”
I wish we had more small publishers. It’s so rare to go into a store now and see a $20-$40 title from some rando. Cheap enough that I can go “Oh, that’s interesting looking I’ll grab it”. Limited Run is great and all, but there’s no magic when you pre-order something 8 months out.
The return on indie games (if there even is a return) is already vanishingly small for 99% of releases - printing and distributing physical copies would just be pouring even more money down the drain.
Oh no doubt. It’s a shame too. We saw the death of the mid-level developer long ago.
When I go to cons I try to buy any smaller self-published titles I see, but wish the market could support smaller devs while remaining consumer-friendly with a “coop” publisher. An entity that can eat a loss while still finding gems that would be lost to time if stuck on a digital store.
That isn’t to say that smaller titles are dead. Currently I look out for stuff published by Soedesco, GS2 Games, Team17, Microids, EastAsiaSoft, etc etc.
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