Sony easier to work with as an indie, Guacamelee dev says

With Guacamelee's release on PS3 and PS Vita imminent, developer Drinkbox Studios took a moment to praise Sony's continuing efforts to reach out to developers--smaller indie studios, in particular.

Ozzie Mejia

March 18, 2013 2:15 PM

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With Guacamelee's release on PS3 and PS Vita imminent, developer Drinkbox Studios took a moment to praise Sony's continuing efforts to reach out to developers--smaller indie studios, in particular.

"The only obstacle to going to their platforms is that you have to have the technical ability to write a console game," said Drinkbox co-founder Graham Smith. "The submission process is straightforward--if you have a game idea, you send it to them. If they like it, they'll let you release it on their platforms. For other platforms, it's not that easy."

Smith talks about the inherent limitations on trying to get indie titles on Microsoft platforms, emphasizing that Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service does not allow for self-published games. "That's why, for us, it's always been easy to release on their platforms," Smith added. "So far, all of our games have been self-published and without a publisher, we are not able to release on the Xbox platforms."

Guacamelee level designer, Chris McQuinn, sees a connection between Sony's developer outreach and the increasing trend of digital game titles. "I think everyone's becoming more aware, especially with the next generation of consoles, that downloadable content is the thing," he said. "When everything is becoming downloadable, it's a lot more encouraging that console makers are reaching out to indies, because they've been making their games downloadable this whole time. They're sort of bringing everybody into the mix, at least that's the general feeling we have, which is great, especially for smaller companies."

Drinkbox is not ruling out a presence on the upcoming PlayStation 4, but admits that Guacamelee's long development cycle likely means they'll miss out on the new console's launch window. "We're talking about it, internally," Smith said, in regards to a PS4 title. "We'd like to do something. We launched Mutant Blobs Attack with the Vita and that did really well for us and it would be great to have something for PS4 at launch, too, but time is limited."

"We need to get our acts together, is what we're saying," McQuinn added, tongue-in-cheek.

Guacamelee is slated to arrive on PS3 and Vita in the next couple of months.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?