As a consumer, this is cool. But devs are rightfully gonna push back hard. This shit should not be forced and they should be compensated.
I also think this could have a negative counter effect. Sony’s going straight for the stick and not even considering the carrot by the sounds of it, which could lead to games skipping the platform, pushback by major devs and if MS and Nintendo sweeten the pot, further marketing and exclusivity deals for them.
Sony could’ve pulled this move last gen when they were effectively the only game in town. But now? Switch is selling gangbusters, the gap between Series and PS5 is supposedly more narrow than its been for years with Xbox reaching company history best sales, Cloud is emerging, PC is growing rapidly. The last thing I’d do is twist an arm like this.
Incentivize, encourage, hell get consumers to advocate that this is what they want. Like MS did with Smart Delivery or PS with VR support. Don’t force. Carrot yes, stick no.
It might possibly be even worse. In the past, developers would be charged for bandwidth usage. If Sony still has that in place, then every “Free Demo” will actually increase charges against the developers.
I just realized for the AAAs as well. Demos are a main selling point for stuff like EA Play and Ubisoft+. Sony is literally using their market position to force other players in the space to lose a competitive point of differentiation. How the fuck do they think this is gonna go over?
Okay, so let’s review the process for releasing a game on Playstation:
Pay ~ $25,000 for better store visibility. Need I say how nuts this is?
Go through an arbitrarily enforced censorship policy. Something another game got away with? Well guess what we want you to go remove it from your game. Don’t care if it takes dev time. Previously only enforced on anime games but recently spread to Western games (Martha is Dead)
(non English specific) Must send reports of your game to the California office in English. Even if your game is not planned for English release. This means hiring a translator which is not cheap for small devs. Big problem for very small Japanese devs who don’t do English releases. (By the way, the developer in this example, Light, does Switch exclusives only nowadays)
[…[it is getting severely inspected, and we’re getting all kinds of questions. And they’re also telling us to please write it all in English. […] And we have this guy here who is in charge of translating it to English and sending it over to Sony, but it really makes me want to tell them ‘What the heck, you guys don’t even speak Japanese?’
Must have a 2 hour trial for your game if it is over ~ $34. It is currently unclear how simple this process will be but nonetheless will be a problem for small/medium devs. It’s also not clear what the punishment is if you don’t do it.
Pay a fee to enable crossplay.
I may have missed several things but these are what come to mind at the moment.
Fantastic! Very, very well deserved. As someone who’s pretty into videogame history in general, and Xbox history in particular, I can’t say enough good things about this doc. I really hope its success will herald other such projects in the future.
I know that some here believe that im a PlayStation fanboy but seeing all this shit that Sony is doing is exactly why I switched to Xbox as my primary gaming console for this generation. If it wasn’t for the fact that im a pure single player console only gamer and yes, love the majority of Sony’s first party exclusives, I wouldn’t have any reason to own a PlayStation 5. SMH.
It’s great that Xbox is doing amazing and this is before all their exclusives outside of Halo/Forza start releasing. It’s going to be insane when all the studios start hitting their stride and we get an exclusive first party game every quarter.
I get labeled an Xbox fanboy but in reality I have owned every single PlayStation and most Nintendo systems (virtual boy and 3DS got skipped). I’m just so critical of PlayStation and Nintendo because they have so much to be critical about. Xbox is on the correct path for the most part.
I have a feeling, going by posts from users, that most Xbots on forums like Resetera have multiple platforms, but lots of Ponies and Nintendrones only have a PS or Nintendo respectively
I have nothing against anyone that has preference of another than Xbox. That’s fine by me. I just don’t like the downplay on the actual success story. Take this quarter earning for example. The fact some are saying we got to wait for Sony’s earning to know if Xbox earning is good news. What does Sony have to do with Microsoft? Why it has to be always?
