World of Goo developer Ron Carmel has surveyed approximately 200 independent developers and asked them if they are creating games for the PSN or XBLA. He has found that in the past most favoured the Xbox 360 but for 2011 and beyond most are focusing on the PlayStation network.
Ron also sent out a follow up survey asking the developers how easy it has been to work with the respective platform owners. Steam came top, closely followed by Facebook, Apple (iOS) and Google (Android). Sony came top of the consoles followed by Nintendo and finally Microsoft.
48% of developers rated the Xbox creators as ‘excruciating’ to work with.
Ron hypothesises that the diversity of games will begin to suffer and players will desert the format. He also states
Everyone I know who’s been handed Microsoft’s boilerplate distribution contract for XBLA was angered and offended. It’s the most exploitative, one-sided distribution contract I’ve seen.
To read more of the research (it’s well worth a look), click here.
Source: 2DBoy
quinkill
Is anyone really that surprised? i mean this is Microsoft!!
Reality Check
If it wasn’t for the US + UK love for the Xbox brand(GOD knows why?)the Xbox 360 would be dead already LoL Oh & all the love they(MS)get off these sort of gaming sites :-o
TROPtastic
TSA isn’t particularly biased towards any platform I think, although the fact that they seem to partially ignore it when Xbox Live goes down is a bit strange.
fattyuk
maybe not biased but this is more of a ps3 orientated site obv,
halbpro
So basically what you’re saying is “If it wasn’t popular in two of the largest gaming markets in the world, it’d be a failure”? You can say that about the PS3 as well, or most consoles really.
fattyuk
Well that is the icing on the cake of PSNs failing.
So let’s all gather round and have a slice of cake, and we’ll pop a slice in the post for Mr.Guillaume Boucher-Vidal.
ron_mcphatty
It’s only Tuesday and the developers are already dug into a fanboy war!
tom_lord
While this is fascinating, it would be even more enlightening to know why…..of course, the source above blames the contract, but being able to develop a game for both PS3 & VITA helps, surely. You could almost say you get two platform releases for the price of 1-ish.
There are also little things like if you develop for PSP now, there is the whole coding thingy that Sony are giving out so you can build in the HD upscale to PS3 from the outset. Or there’s the PS suite on the way which is yet another possible revenue stream. Or the possibility of adding 3D to games as added value for a relatively small addition to development.
I’m just guessing of course, but I find this whole subject matter very interesting.
The Lone Steven
*grabs popcorn and waits to see if some developers will turn into fanboys* ;)
I have heard that MS’s rules for XBLA makes it hard for a new indie dev to developer a game for it but i’m not sure if i’m 100% correct. I know that Sony i think will allow anything on the store(except SCEE as they are lazy and cba to do anything). So it could be that more devs are switching to PSN due to how easy it is to get their game uploaded to the store.