It turns out yesterday’s announcement of the Xbox One allowing indie developers isn’t quite as good as it seems according to Retro City Rampage developer Brian Provinciano.
According to Provinciano, Microsoft’s self-publishing announcement is “another example of them changing policy, but it sounding better than it is when the whole story is revealed.”
VGChartz;s Adam Cartwright: "For a console that can only really be seen as a commercial failure, the PlayStation Vita did extremely well for itself in terms of software – more than 1500 games are available for it and that figure is surprisingly still growing each week, despite the hardware being discontinued earlier this year and despite the rhetoric suggesting it’s only a good machine for indie 2D platformers and niche Japanese RPGs.
Unfortunately certain genres didn't receive any representation at all and act as glaring holes in the Vita’s software library. Some of these just aren’t particularly popular on consoles in general, such as city builders, which have been niche for years. It’s these genres I’m aiming to look at in this article – what they are (including examples of some modern entries in the genres), why they weren't represented on the Vita, as well as some suggestions about what alternatives are available to scratch that itch."
With the release of Shakedown: Hawaii coming tomorrow, Vblank Entertainment frontman Brian Provinciano took time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions from OnlySP.
Alex S. from Link-Cable writes: "The official end of the WiiWare service may not be until early 2019 but we wanted to give everybody as much of a chance as possible to remember all of the great games that Nintendo’s first every download service brought us. Last week we counted down the first 10 games in our look at the Top 20 WiiWare games ever made, and if you haven’t had the chance yet you can check out those picks right here but now we switch our focus over to the very best that WiiWare has to offer so if you still have a Wii (or a Wii U) kicking around make sure to download these games before they are lost forever."
Hmm, many developers are skeptics of MS's self-publishing announcement. Let's just hope they come through with their promises!
xbox one is just getting better and better, day one.
Of course you're going to have rules. Just as long MS will be fair and open-minded to gamers who want to create games.
If he's already decided not to make games for xbox one or get a xbox one. How does he know anything about how they will allow or limit self-publishing. He's said on a number of occasions tha t he's had bad blood with them. I'm pretty sure they wouldnt keep him in the loop of anything new they are doing.
There's pretty much always 'Strings Attached' in business.