Geoff Keighley on acquisitions, Game Pass, and future of indie games

Headlines in recent weeks have been taken up by subscription services and big name acquisitions, but despite the cannibalisation Geoff Keighley remains positive

[aaronaton]

He talks about 'Indies having a great future' but which each new generation they are seeing spiraling costs to keep up.
Back in the good old PS2 days, devs like Free Radical 'Timesplitters' could make a top selling game with just 15+ staff.
Games cost far less to make to due the graphically fidelity not being demanding enough.
All i can see is indies getting sucked into UE5 just to keep costs down, whilst gamers suffer with graphical clones and uninspiring design/concepts.

Where are all the shmups? Surely this is a perfect cost friendly genre that does not require graphical fidelity.

[sourOG]

It’s the pricing structure. Smaller teams need to make smaller games.

When they get too ambitious it turns into biomutant. It’s okay to dream big but the game suffered from cluttered mechanics and needless scale. It’s okay to have shorter, tighter, well paced experiences. Let the pricing reflect that. AA indie game, 10-20 hours 20-30 bucks. Who’s mad about the scale if they are buying at a reasonable standard?

[porkChop]

Costs have actually decreased quite a bit in some areas. Many engines are available to use for free or cheap. Many engines offer a sort of grace period where they take no royalties until you sell a certain amount. Any Xbox console can be used as a dev kit rather than buying a super expensive dev kit like in the past. Developing isn't free but it's significantly easier and cheaper to get into now.

[Bobertt]

If Bethesda and Activision can get away with just patching the same old engine for multiple gens i don't see why an Indie developer can't do the same instead of them all jumping to UE5 to compete graphically.

[neutralgamer1992]

Acquisitions will be fast and furious this generation it seems