Indie developers who are working on their games and want to have their next title available on Playstation platforms have a little bit more flexibility now as Sony will allow for game to be sold to customers even if the title is in an Alpha stage of development. Normally buying into a game that is in an alpha stage wouldn’t be something people would normally want to do, say 10 years ago or even 7 years ago, but now it’s a more widely accepted practice, especially after the success of Minecraft.
Other platforms have gotten in on the action and recently Steam even announced an ‘early access’ program which offers up games in earlier stages of development for sale to people interested in getting in on the ground floor of a game. So why the hell are we talking about this here on DroidGamers? Well that is because Sony will have this service available on their Platstation platforms, as in plural, as in Playstation Mobile.
Adam Boyes, VP of publisher and developer relations at Sony America, stated that this openness would be extending not jut to the Playstation 4 but to the PS Vita as well as Playstation Mobile. This means that Android gamers who happen to have a Playstation Mobile compatible device could start seeing early development stage games available for purchase, quite possibly at a discounts price over what the game’s actual price will be when it is completed, like how Minecraft did before it went ‘official’.
Yeah, if it doesn’t have any bugs that are completely destroying the world. CCP’s Dust 514 is a great example of putting out content that you know is not final. If you want to monetize it, that’s fine. I mean, if you want to put out a game that’s playable and does pass the checklists and stuff, you can. If it doesn’t sell and you can’t support, you may not want to support, but we absolutely support that. We allow that on all of our platforms, that sort of continually updating and selling. Again, if people buy it and they’re passionate about it, and you want to improve it and make it better over time you can. – Adam Boyes, VP of publisher and developer relations, Sony America
It should be interesting to see what titles begin appearing on Playstation Mobile in the near future that are not necessarily finished products and how consumers will take to those games.
Website Referenced: Joystiq
