Sony: Indie support is key to innovation

Sony Computer Entertainment chief Shuhei Yoshida notes that industry innovation suffers when smaller indie developers aren't supported.

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Sony Computer Entertainment chief Shuhei Yoshida says that the games industry must be supportive of independent digital game developers. "Without doing so, the whole industry will stall, in terms of innovation," he said.

Yoshida, who manages Sony's global in-house development studios, also claimed that the upcoming PlayStation Vita was designed to be developer-friendly. The new PlayStation Suite platform--announced early this year--will also enable PlayStation developers to port content to Google's Android OS.

Both initiatives seem to indicate that Sony is "putting their money where their mouth is," when it comes to supporting indie developers, especially when one takes into consideration the number of smaller studios it's been backing with regard to indie digital titles and PS Minis on the PlayStation Network.

"Having the capability to sell their games on the network is key to giving those smaller teams an opportunity to come up with ideas," explained Yoshida, "and sometimes invest their own money to come up with something special and have their projects meet with millions of users."

(via Develop)

From The Chatty
  • reply
    July 11, 2011 8:00 PM

    Jeff Mattas posted a new article, Sony: Indie support is key to innovation.

    Sony Computer Entertainment chief Shuhei Yoshida notes that industry innovation suffers when smaller indie developers aren't supported.

    • reply
      July 11, 2011 8:39 PM

      No! Popamole dumbed-down shooters are the key to innovation!

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      July 11, 2011 9:47 PM

      Too bad they weren't singing this tune when the opportunity to make PSN an open platform for homebrew, enabling a range of programs and games without all the cost, came along and they were so busy screaming, "GET HOTZ! GET 'EM! DEVOUR HIS SOUL!" they didn't realize it came and went by.

      I suppose realizing it for PSVita is something...

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        July 12, 2011 5:59 AM

        Sony doesn't want an open platform. They want a closed platform, but want to have indie developers make amazing new things like Flower that can market the PlayStation platform as fostering creativity. I'm not sure how they'll be able to do this without offering a cheap SDK, like XNA.

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      July 11, 2011 10:55 PM

      how nice, are they going to do something about it? MS have XNA, Sony need something as well.

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      July 12, 2011 6:14 AM

      [deleted]

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        July 12, 2011 7:11 AM

        Yea Playstation is anti- indie in its roots (sdk and hardware).

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          July 12, 2011 7:17 AM

          What do you mean by hardware? You can put in any size HD. 3rd party wireless controllers are supported. Any Bluetooth headset is supported. All of these are unlike Xbox 360 support.

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            July 12, 2011 9:43 AM

            You're thinking consumer. To be Indie friendly, they need cheap Dev-Kits and licensing.

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              July 13, 2011 12:24 AM

              Like letting people use the UDK to create content for the PSP-2.

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                July 13, 2011 9:50 AM

                UDK is a bit bloated for something like that. If I were coding for it I would want to use a much leaner engine.

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