PlayStation Indie PS4

Dan Adelman knows a thing or two about indie games. The industry veteran previously spearheaded the launch of Microsoft’s wildly successful Xbox Live Arcade, before switching his attention to Nintendo’s digital push, where he secured a slew of top titles for the House of Mario’s machines, including World of Goo and the BIT.TRIP series. Now, having departed the Japanese organisation after almost a decade in his post, he’s opened up to Nintendo Life about PlayStation’s indie loving approach.

“Sony’s done a great job improving their processes and making them much more indie friendly,” he beamed. “I give a lot of credit to [third-party chief] Adam Boyes, but he often says that there was already a grass roots effort underway at Sony just waiting for someone like him to show up. I really commend Sony HQ for giving Adam the reins, but I give Adam even more kudos for knowing what to do with them.”

The PlayStation maker’s really led the way in the digital space of late, locking down titles such as No Man’s Sky and DayZ. However, according to Adelman, Sony’s strategy isn’t that different to Nintendo’s. “In many ways, Nintendo has led the way on a lot of the key areas,” he continued. “Nintendo allowed any developer to self-publish since day one on WiiWare. Recently, the policies have become increasingly flexible, allowing developers to set their own price, put their games on sale when they want, and providing a free Unity license to all developers.”

Adelman believes that his ex-employer Microsoft has the most catching up to do, but even its annoyingly named ID@Xbox programme showed signs of improvement this year at Gamescom. It seems, then, that the biggest winners are independent developers themselves, as all three manufacturers tussle over securing the biggest games for their systems.

[source nintendolife.com]