Jonathan Blow, creator behind the highly successful downloadable title Braid, recently spoke with EDGE Magazine regarding the differences between working with Microsoft and Sony in the Indie developer scene. Blow was quick to compliment Microsoft’s ability to push Indie games into XBLA more swiftly, but also gave Sony a ton of credit for its ability to take risks with games it gives the green light to.
Oddly enough, and something that surprised me, Blow revealed that a lot of recently released games on Xbox Live Arcade tend to tank tremendously and actually lose money. This isn’t something that should be happening on such a large platform with the type of audience that it provides.
“Microsoft has provided the lower barrier to entry with Xbox Live Indie Games, but most of them are not very good – I don’t think that’s a controversial statement,” said Blow.
“So if you’re thinking about the impact of indie games on the whole forum of games then probably Sony has done more because of the way they curate the games they put on there – they’re actually looking for games that are artful or experimental.
“I mean, they published Linger In Shadows; Microsoft would never have done that – that’s not even really a game. XBLA is more conservative than PSN but it still has a larger audience so it’s much more commercially feasible, as long as you can get your game noticed – which is getting harder over time, but is still possible.”
Blow added: “Some of the stuff Microsoft signs and publishes on XBLA is pretty bad; some of it is very good. Super Meat Boy is obviously a really good game. I wish they had promoted that more heavily, but Live Arcade is part of a bureaucratic machine, which is part of a bigger bureaucratic machine and so on – what more can they do?”
Blow obviously isn’t the first to make statements like this. Many developers in the past have credited Sony and its ability to take risks on games most other company’s wouldn’t dare touch — Heavy Rain is a prime example of this. Hopefully, as a PlayStation 3 owner, Sony continues to push risky games as they seem to work out more-so than fail.
And in other news that everybody already knew..
Well, it’s nice having a catalog of compliments like this from companies. It helps in the long run as a selling point for the system or as a way of persuasion for friends on the fence on which system to buy. It seems devs are less scared of MS now. That or they aren’t bending over and blowing them like before because they know there is money to be made on PS3 as well.
I agree with this. While I do believe that in the end Nintendo took the hardest risk this generation with the Wii, Sony obviously took more risky business decisions then both companies. The PS3 started off poor and unattractive (Ask me in late 2006 and 2007 and I wouldn’t even consider getting a PS3), but has since grown into a very well made system.