Team Meat, the indie game developer/anagram behind Super Meat Boy and featured prominently in Indie Game: The Movie, have announced that they are "not interested" in developing for next-gen consoles, such as the next Xbox, the recently announced Playstation 4, and the already released Wii U.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Tommy Refenes illustrated the overhead costs of next-gen consoles as their big deterrent. "The overhead cost of just developing for those consoles is insane. It costs zero dollars to develop on Steam if you already have a computer. When you look at PlayStation and Xbox and Nintendo you have to buy thousand dollar dev kits and pay for certification and pay for testing and pay for localisation - you have to do all these things and at the end of the day it's like, 'I could have developed for other platforms and it would've been easier," stated Refenes.
However, Refenes highlighted releasing games for the PC (via Steam) as well as Apple's App Store and Google's Android store, Google Play. "We know the stress associated with going into console stuff. When you look at the stress that comes with Steam and iOS and the Google Play store, you look at those and you look at which hoops you'd have to jump through to get on any one of the consoles, it's like, 'is this worth the time? Is this worth the headache?"
Refenes went on to say that while the last generation of consoles provided an outlet for developers such as him and Braid creator Jonathan Blow to succeed (with both developers games becoming big hits), home consoles are "not the only outlet anymore and those seem to be the more difficult outlets than just contacting Steam and just putting your game on there and supporting it easily." Ironically, Jonathan Blow recently has signed on a timed-exclusivity deal with Sony on their next console with his upcoming game, The Witness.
According to Refenes, the next generation of consoles could also be one of the last, highlighting the sales of iPads, which sold 23 million units in a 13 week period. "An iPad comes out and does a year's worth of console sales in a weekend," Refenes stated. "I don't feel confident there's going to be a PlayStation 5. I don't feel confident there's going to be another console after the Wii U. There probably will be, but it's totally diminishing returns."
Team Meat recently announced work on their next game, Mew-Genics. The other half of Team Meat, Edward McMillen, has also announced a remake of his recently released indie hit The Binding of Isaac for the PC, Playstation 3, and Vita.
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Speaking to Eurogamer, Tommy Refenes illustrated the overhead costs of next-gen consoles as their big deterrent. "The overhead cost of just developing for those consoles is insane. It costs zero dollars to develop on Steam if you already have a computer. When you look at PlayStation and Xbox and Nintendo you have to buy thousand dollar dev kits and pay for certification and pay for testing and pay for localisation - you have to do all these things and at the end of the day it's like, 'I could have developed for other platforms and it would've been easier," stated Refenes.
However, Refenes highlighted releasing games for the PC (via Steam) as well as Apple's App Store and Google's Android store, Google Play. "We know the stress associated with going into console stuff. When you look at the stress that comes with Steam and iOS and the Google Play store, you look at those and you look at which hoops you'd have to jump through to get on any one of the consoles, it's like, 'is this worth the time? Is this worth the headache?"
Refenes went on to say that while the last generation of consoles provided an outlet for developers such as him and Braid creator Jonathan Blow to succeed (with both developers games becoming big hits), home consoles are "not the only outlet anymore and those seem to be the more difficult outlets than just contacting Steam and just putting your game on there and supporting it easily." Ironically, Jonathan Blow recently has signed on a timed-exclusivity deal with Sony on their next console with his upcoming game, The Witness.
According to Refenes, the next generation of consoles could also be one of the last, highlighting the sales of iPads, which sold 23 million units in a 13 week period. "An iPad comes out and does a year's worth of console sales in a weekend," Refenes stated. "I don't feel confident there's going to be a PlayStation 5. I don't feel confident there's going to be another console after the Wii U. There probably will be, but it's totally diminishing returns."
Team Meat recently announced work on their next game, Mew-Genics. The other half of Team Meat, Edward McMillen, has also announced a remake of his recently released indie hit The Binding of Isaac for the PC, Playstation 3, and Vita.
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