Imran is just stating the truth but frames it rather clickbaity. Indie games need visibility more than anything or they drown in the sea of new releases. That was true before Game Pass and will be true in the future. Game Pass lifts indie games up because it gives them visibility for millions of users. It was the same with Summer of Arcade, these were almost always the best selling indie games on 360. The conclusion should be:
“to sell well == needs curation and visibility, Game Pass is a good way to be visible”
There are exceptions, like Deaths Door. But you need to be really good to be an exception.
Yeah, the indie market is very oversaturated these days. Game Pass might exacerbate the problem there are so many indie games being made that it’s hard too stand out.
I think a lot of indie game studios won’t survive past their first release in the current market, and I also think we will see less small indie studios in the future and more AA or new independent AAA studios.
But it is just natural - it is very easy to make games these days and at the same time it is too expensive to make big AAA games. So either you go to a big publisher or make indie game by yourself. And considering how many people go in gaming - there are many indies games, difficult to stand out indeed.
The way I see it even if your game has under performed on a certain platform you at least try to sell it, with Furi they didn’t X enhance the game and didn’t put it on Game Pass (I can’t see a scenario where MS didn’t want that game on GP) to improve things on Xbox, they just put it there and that was it. They can do whatever they want with their time and budget (aka not releasing the DLC/current gen patch on Xbox) but as someone who purchased this game on Xbox at full price I also have the right to not be happy about this (especially since I really liked the game) and be pretty disappointed at the developer.
Beeing featured on the front page is one. And of course sales.
We will see more indie games. Its getting easier and more practical to make smaller and bigger games as an indie dev thanks to cheap tooling and knowledge transfer. Not all indie studios will survive, yeah. It was always this way.
I think releasing a game on gamepass and stores on other platforms is good.
With gamepass you get that money upfront so there is that security and at the same time you get full sales on ps and switch. if your a indi developer who can only make one version at a time I think gamepass is still good because its money upfront
I see many contradictory things about how indies perform on Xbox. I remember the dev behind Descenders saying games releasing on Playstation doesn’t always translate to sales
Also the whole notion of gamepass make xbox gamers not support indies is false. Like as stated below his game sales increased due to being on gamepass. I believe that is a result of gamepass makes games more visible, which will increase chances of gamers buying product. I think issue in general with indies is it’s a competitive market at the moment with similar gametypes and devs need to find ways to market their games. I do believe gamepass provide a good opprunity for that, but I feel indie devs also need to market games better so it can perform better on all platforms.
I think there is potentially a danger of “indie game not on gamepass, not gonna bother” but I think as always it just comes down to marketing, not every game is going to do well, whether the game is good or not, that’s just how it is and it will be like that on every platform
Steam has been an indie paradise for years now but does every game do well there, absolutely not, why? because marketing and visibility and thats no different on xbox/ps/switch
and using 1 game, a game from 2016 at that as some kind of proof of “gamepass bad” is a bit of a joke
And if Xbox becomes big enough, indies will naturally come on Xbox. As no matter how indies complain about Playstation, they still release the games there as they just can’t ignore the platform.
What Xbox needs is just to grow stronger and everything else will naturally come there. Also acquire another publisher for security
Did we ever read anywhere that KOTOR would be a timed exclusive? It’s interesting he mentions PC too, so this can only mean Xbox as next platform. Just remains to be seen how long (if) Sony will extend it ala FF7R style.
