Mark Cerny Emphasises PlayStation Support For Buy-to-play, Free-to-play And Micro-transactions

Sony’s focus shift towards ensuring indie developers are as supported as AAA studios has been well documented, with several currently high-profile placements working hard to create a wide spread of gaming choice.

And at Develop Conference in Brighton this morning, Sony’s Mark Cerny reinforces these now-established principles, and explained why indie games on the PS3 were few and far between, despite being some of the best.

“A number of issues began to arose from the design and technology of the PlayStation 3,” he said [via]. “In some cases, it became an inspiration to indie developers. Flower and PixelJunk Shooter were in many ways born out of a testament to how SPUs and CPUs can be used to create distinct visuals and unique gameplay.”

“But more often than not,” he continued, “architecture of the hardware in the early days on the PlayStation 3 hampered indie development of the platform.”

Cerny at the PS4 reveal in February.

“We therefore worked hard to make PlayStation platforms a more welcoming place for indie titles,” he said, explaining that Adam Boyes, as head of publisher and developer relations at the company, totally changed the platform holder’s approach.

“We can now pretty much support any business model,” Cerny continued, “whether it be buy-to-play, free-to-play, or micro-transactions. We understand that accessibility is paramount. We’ve gone from putting our process out front to putting people out front.”

This morning we revealed that Sony were planning on sending out dev kits for PS4 to British universities.

7 Comments

  1. Cerny could very well be the best thing to happen to Sony. Putting him front and centre for the PS4 launch was inspired. I hope they’re paying him well….

    • He’s certainly doing a great job.
      Unlike Don Mattrick did at MS.

  2. Does anyone remember “Ermagherd!”?

    With that in mind, say “Sony” in Ermagherd speak!

    Pick up the pieces of your mind on the way out…..

  3. My only slight criticism is the use of the word “shift” as that implies that resources have been moved away from something else which isn’t the case. Sony has done a top job of broadening their commitment to developers and indies have spoken ever-so highly about what’s happening for the PS4.

    Irrespective of my own comment, lovely news and always great to read. :-)

  4. Mark Cerny at the Brighton conference, discussing Knack
    Mark Cerny at the Brighton conference, discussing indie games

    I can’t get enough of the guy and there’s still titbits of info in both the above links. Fascinating stuff about them creating a controller 50% larger to see how children felt trying to use a DS3 controller! :-)

    • The larger controller being for the Sony engineers and designers to use… not to completely screw the children over and scare them from ever having a go! :-)

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