Getting some attention today. Thread and such.
Feels like that guy just starting developing games for console. Most of the stuff he talks about has been standard operating procedure for all console platforms forever.
I was just curious if Microsoft and Nintendo were doing the same charging for ‘Featured’ store space as PLATFORM X and it seems like that is not the case for MS (of course it may always vary on a case by case basis). Eric Freeman is saying that his game got a week of time on release to be featured on the Xbox store for free while Sony charges $25,000 to $200,000 depending on clout.
So it’s hard to get noticed on console? That seems, well… I mean I realize there are more concerns there too but still.
Nesrie! You’re back!
Sorry, just noticed. I’ll show myself out of this thread to which I have nothing to contribute.
Heh, no worries. I haven’t been back long, and thank you.
Just looking at the Steam sale going on here, not at all a system that requires a bunch of hoop to get through, so we’ve been told. Trailer, no trailer, promotion, no promotion it’s just mounds and mounds of games all getting a few seconds of attention and about half being dismissed because they’re trying to sell me an unfinished product with promises of unicorns and gold dusted leprechauns one day, maybe before I die.
I’m not sure why this guy feels like a platform owner should devote resources to a game they don’t like.
And I’m also not sure why it’s a surprise that it costs money to get promoted on the PlayStation Store. Again, this is standard practice. Wait till he sees what it costs to get promotion at Best Buy or Walmart, for example.
In general this feels like a “it’s hard to be an indie developer” rant. Which, yeah, it’s true. Did he think it would be otherwise?
Because it is otherwise for the other console platforms.
Not really. He notes that Xbox has been friendly, but it’s not uncommon for one platform owner to be interested in an indie game and not the other. Whomever at Xbox evaluates these things saw something that the person at PlayStation didn’t. It happens all the time.
https://twitter.com/_ericfreeman/status/1410268572367028230?s=20
This is a little silly. MS definitely charges for promotional placement. And I doubt Sony failed to list their game in the new releases section when it came out. That’s more of a complaint about how stores are organized and displayed, which is fair, but when 20 indie games are releasing every week on a platform you can’t expect them all to receive prominent promotion.
Yeah, this is super true. Sony has editors picks and will promote games that catch their eye in the store, the blog, the podcast… This guys game didn’t click for them. Oh well, that’s not a systemic failure. And in the past Sony has been accused of being too generous with promoting stuff like Life of Black Tiger, which is famously awful, for getting the same treatment all indies get.
Without transparency about which developers/publishers are paying for placement and exactly how much revenue different games are generating for Sony/MS/etc it seems hard to be able to compare them.
There will never be that transparency, nor should it be expected.
This is how storefronts work, whether digital or physical. If that guy’s games were so great, people would be dying to get their hands on them and they’d be featured. Life sucks. Keep making games and hope one catches on or take out that $25k loan if you believe in it enough to get some placement. It’s the largest and best selling PLATFORM X in the world. That’s why it costs a lot to get up in front of people on it.
It seemed like a mix of valid and invalid complaints. Lack of ability to manage the price of your game for promotions, sounds like a valid concern. Lack of promotion of your game by the console manufacturer, yeah that’s off base they don’t owe you free marketing. And it’s hardly a surprise Microsoft would be friendlier, they have an in-house content problem at the moment and they need 3rd parties and indies to buff up Game Pass and Xbox until their in house is fully spun up.
Too much freedom to manage sale prices results in the Switch problem where there are always 700 games discounted, most of which are crap, making it really obnoxious to browse the deals. Nintendo even eventually stopped people from selling their games at 99% off trying to get to the top of the best selling list.
I’m still kind of surprised people really even browse the stores. The kids have favorite personalities that tell them what to play. I wish list games the games I read about and hear about new releases from like a dozen sources at any given time, none of them are store shelves.
I mean any storefront is just littered with DLC and F2P crap; half the time it’s a slog to even get to the games.
Man, the tiniest of platform-level promotions on Steam at least is a huge deal.
At the end of the day, I think this guy is going to find that his little Twitter rant was a massively bad idea. The world is basically yawning at his “revelations” and he’s possibly burned a very important bridge for an indie developer. Maybe Sony didn’t love his current game enough to promote it, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have liked his next. Or the one after that.
I think Among Us lived in obscurity for years until a streamer discovered it.
Mark Darrah, 25-year veteran of the industry, including being the chief of Dragon Age at BioWare, has something to say about piracy.
Well yeah, that’s my stance to with piracy. You cannot equate every pirated copyt with lost revenue, but also it’s crazy to say that piracy doesn’t affect anyone because you never intended to pay for that product.
This is fascinating. Reminds me of Richard Pryor in Superman III.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-microsoft-xbox-gift-card-fraud/
Kvashuk started small, generating Xbox cards in increments from $10 to $100. But his haul quickly escalated. By the time federal agents caught up with him almost two years later, he had stolen more than 152,000 Xbox gift cards, worth $10.1 million, and was living off the proceeds in a seven-figure lakefront home with plans to buy a ski chalet, yacht, and seaplane. This past November, a judge sentenced him to nine years in prison.