Sony wants to attract more indie developers to PlayStation by giving them a free PS5 dev kit
‘It is our continued goal to make PlayStation the best place to publish and play games of all shapes and sizes.'
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny
🤞 Sony has a new incentive to attract independent developers to PS5
🆓 Eligible publishers and devs can receive a free PS5 dev kit and testing kit
🆕 Sony hopes the scheme will bring new voices, ideas, and experiences to PS5
🥳 Numerous indie games have launched on PS4 and PS5 to great success
Sony is stepping up its pursuit of indie developers. The company aims to attract more independent games to its platform by loaning development hardware to newly licensed PlayStation game publishers and developers, meaning those eligible can receive a PS5 development kit and a PS5 testing kit.
In a blog post on the SIE website, head of PlayStation creators Greg Rice said:
“It is our continued goal to make PlayStation the best place to publish and play games of all shapes and sizes. Over the past couple of years, we have been thrilled to support our external publishing partners with features in Indie Spotlight events, indie montage videos on our social channels, dedicated space for PlayStation Indies on PlayStation.com, and have been working to reduce the time it takes to get a new developer on-boarded on PlayStation.
“As such, we are always striving to lower the barrier of entry and improve the process for publishing on PlayStation. We’re pleased to announce a new initiative that will make it easier for new partners to hop in and get started with developing for PlayStation.”
PlayStation has a long and successful history with indie games. Games like Rocket League and Fall Guys were PS Plus free games when they were released on PS4, and Stray recently launched on PS5 as a day one addition to the game catalog on PlayStation Premium and PlayStation Plus. No Man’s Sky and Sifu (one of the best PS5 games) are two other notable titles that came to PlayStation consoles first.
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Indies have slowly closed the gap on the so-called “AAA developers” like Ubisoft, EA, and Activision. They tend to offer unique experiences that not only match the type of quality and scale players are used to from bigger companies, but indies have the freedom to take more risks.
It’s encouraging that Sony wants to attract more indies to PS5, who can often be locked out due to the high cost of dev kits. Back in the PlayStation 3 days, the PS3 dev kit cost $50,000, was 2ft long, and weighed almost 40 pounds.
Unlike indie devs, you’ll need to check our PS5 restock page if you’re after Sony’s elusive console. The system continues to be hard to find in the US.
Sony recently teased the PSVR 2 user experience, which borrows several elements from the Meta Quest 2. We’re still waiting for Sony to announce the PSVR 2’s price, but it could be a lot more tempting to PS5 owners now that Meta is raising the price of Quest 2 by $100.