@ryo
>So Nintendo Switch is perhaps the only console left worth developing for
You can still develop homebrew games for older consoles. There are tons of libraries for them. But consoles are pretty much dead to me. Yeah, there's Nintendo but I don't expect them to be worth supporting much longer, and you still have to follow and agree to their licensing agreements just to get your games on their.

I honestly think there is nothing wrong with staying PC-exclusive. If you can't game on PC then I don't know what to tell you. This isn't the 90s anymore where you have to configure a bunch of shit just to get your game working properly. Every computer has an HDMI port and every gamepad uses either USB or Bluetooth so you can easily play PC games console-style and we have handheld gaming PCs like the GPD Win and the Steamdeck for portable gamers, so I don't want to hear any excuses about "muh authentic experience".

And you don't need the latest hardware to have a good time. I still have a blast gaming on a toaster even if it means lowering the settings. This especially shouldn't be a concern when it comes to indie games.

@xianc78
@ryo
The Xbox one series is also the top selling game console with a low barrier of entry, as in you can develop games yourself for it.

It's just Microsoft has done a poor job of marketing it to people.

@PhenomX6 @xianc78
> The Xbox one series is also the top selling game console

Really?
Here in Japan the entire Xbox line has always been pretty much irrelevant.
You might find 1 strip of a select few games at Yodobashi Camera squeezed inbetween a massive CensorStation and even more massive Nintendo sections.
Any smaller game retailers don't even try to sell any Xbox or its games at all.

@ryo @PhenomX6 @xianc78 Xbox is pretty much dead over there, maybe some hope for it to revive but highly doubt it but a slight chance seeing Sony literally just left a void in Japan that Xbox or Nintendo will fill in if Xbox can actually provide japanese games like how Japan studios once did etc.

@ryo @PhenomX6 @xianc78 I can see them becoming popular if they rebranded as the msx with japanese exclusive games and ditch Xbox

@luithe
@xianc78 @ryo
That was actually part of the 360 strategy. Except two things happened: Sony was still relevant and Microsoft censored gal gun.

Cave also was around at that point, they're just a brand name now and generic gacha dev licensing their old greatest hits to porting studios.

@PhenomX6 @xianc78 @ryo they pretty much have the chance now and never with Nintendo being there and not wanting them to have an iron fist monopoly

@luithe @xianc78 @ryo It's Microsoft. They'll forget it exists, like their Xbox One indie program. Literally the only people doing marketing for the Xbox One creators program are YouTubers who want to show off emulators.
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers/creators-program

@PhenomX6 @ryo @luithe Does Microsoft not care about indies anymore? They were the first to embrace it all the way back in the Xbox 360 era with XBLA and XNA. But they killed the XNA framework nearly a decade ago and turned a blind eye to their indie program on Xbox One like you said.

Now, the Switch seems to be the most indie friendly console. Which is ironic because Nintendo was pretty indie unfriendly during the 7th-gen (WiiWare had a 10MB limit and there was that Bob's Game fiasco).

@xianc78 @ryo @luithe I feel a lot is the animosity towards the infamous 360 era policies. Namely, the XNA store was a segregated store from the main store and you at one time had to pay for patches.

https://www.eurogamer.net/microsoft-no-longer-charges-developers-to-patch-their-xbox-360-games

Then the Xbox One announcement trashfire presumably delayed the devkit plans as Microsoft was gaining a reputation of being bad to work with for indies.

Meanwhile Sony and Nintendo have indies both because of nostalgia (Nintendo and "I always wanted to make a NINTENDO game :D" come to mind but Sony has a lot too) and Sony's positive rep in the PS3/PS4/Vita era. Namely, the Vita indie scene said they would have kept developing for the platform had Sony still allowed devs to push games to the store. It had a post-Commodore era Amiga vibe to the scene.

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/04/indie-developers-are-keeping-the-playstation-vita-alive/
https://www.engadget.com/2015-12-24-sony-versus-evil-banner-saga-vita-port.html
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2021/07/rumour-ps-vita-store-will-release-no-new-games-after-july-20/
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-10-25-the-developers-that-supported-the-playstation-vita-until-the-very-end

Devs are also willing to let Sony/Nintendo get a free pass because of nostalgia and the longtime desire to want to make a game for their system, something the Xbox isn't old enough to have especially as it lacked the same loyal brand evangelists.

@xianc78 @luithe @ryo As for the Xbox One, they didn't outright kill the indie program. What they did have was a scare that they were going to or restrict it to those who were using it to make games because they began purging Windows dev accounts. When the Xbox guys found out they were fucking angry over this.

It's just the Indie program on the Xbox One just "exists". It's like a random store in the mall. There's no real developer Discords for it, the UWP Discord doesn't discuss the Xbox much, and most talk about the Xbox One dev mode is about running RetroArch on it.

Though I'm not sure it's solely Microsoft's fault here, it's also the fact there are a lot more people buying Xboxes to game on them, than there are people buying Xboxes to code on them. It's the same problem most console homebrew scenes have, at best they end up solely being emulator boxes and at worst get used for piracy/game cheating.

@PhenomX6 @ryo @luithe Sony has always been somewhat indie friendly even going back to the PS1 with their Net Yeroze consumer devkit and Sony was friendly towards homebrew developers with an official Linux distro for the PS2.

Nintendo, on the other hand seemed out right hostile towards indies up until the later years of the Wii U because they were the only devs keeping the system afloat besides Ubisoft and Nintendo themselves. WiiWare in particular had a 10MB file size limit (mostly due to the limited space on the Wii's NAND) and a huge chunk of the games on there were literally ports of popular flash games. Super Meat Boy was planned to be a WiiWare exclusive but they couldn't get the game under that filesize limit so it got ported to everything else.

@xianc78 @PhenomX6 @luithe Microshaft cared about indies so much, you couldn't even self-publish, so you had to go through a major publisher for that.
Nintendo and Soyny both didn't give a fuck about indies during the Wii/DS/PS3/PSP era, but if you got on their platform and got their ultra expensive devkits, they still let you self-publish at least.

@PhenomX6 @ryo I'd rather not support Xbox One/Series X|S because it's Microsoft and I really don't like the direction they are going (not just gaming but everything else). At least porting to Windows doesn't require a licensing fee.

@xianc78 The reason why the Switch is the only console left that's worth supporting is because of their handsoff approach towards 3rd parties.
They will only deny your submission if they find breaking bugs during their test play, but then they just tell you to fix it, and then resubmit (which by itself is quite a painful process).

The most painful part in my experience publishing DSi and 3DS games was preparing a user manual.
Not a problem if you have a team behind you, but pretty exhausting if you're all alone.

But besides the Switch, I too play only PC games and retro games.
No mobile games, every single mobile "game" is either a puzzle game littered with ads, or a LOYVE SURVICE which they can deprive you from access by shutting down servers after some time, or the ones they released back in 2008~2010 that are just unplayable due to having buttons ON the screen, having fingers covering much of the action, and on top of that being hard to press too.

@ryo You also have to pay to get the ESRB, CERO, PEGI, etc to review and rate your game, and I just don't want to pay the extra fee for that. Video game, movie, TV, etc ratings are bullshit. Just slap a "parental advisory" warning if your game has mature content.

Nintendo also asked to remove a Ruby interpreter easter egg in one game despite the fact that the interpreter in question was sandboxed and thus poses no security risks. I find that bullshit because a lot of games have hidden Unix terminals, BASIC interpreters, etc as easter eggs.

@xianc78
> You also have to pay to get the ESRB, CERO, PEGI, etc to review and rate your game

No longer the case for digital-only games.

> Nintendo also asked to remove a Ruby interpreter easter egg in one game despite the fact that the interpreter in question was sandboxed and thus poses no security risks.

Yea, I agree that was pretty bullshit.