So I read on the Unity blog that Unity will have Sony support for the PS4, however this was in March. Is this still under development? Is it going to be released whenever the PS4 officially comes out?
They release licenses for the consoles when the console actually comes out.
Actually Unity will be having signups soon to provide developers with tools for the PS4, PSVita, and PSM…They did the same with the Microsoft Tools!
They’re still working on it. I’ve heard from a number of sources that the PS4 deployment should be usable (in beta) around December.
If that is true, then not too many Indie games will be available on PS4 launch date. I was planning to have my game on PS3 / PS4 maybe on a December - January timeframe…
Well, to be honest I don’t know too much about publishing on consoles but still I was hoping it would be like publishing on Google Play…
Whatever their plan ends up being, it is a pretty safe bet that it won’t be anything like google play or the app store. At least probably not in the near future. It’ll probably be an expanded version of what they already have, with changes to their process for selecting games.
When they (the consoles stores) talk about Indie games, they are talking about the top tier Indie games (generally), not the full spectrum, and almost certainly not an “anyone can publish” type atmosphere. There will be some sort of selection process. Same with MS, “self-publishing” only means that it will no longer be a requirement to have a publisher. The game will still have to be selected by MS to be in their store. The Windows store will be more like Google play and the app store.
I doubt publishing on any of the next-gen consoles will be like Google Play.
From what I’ve read, publishing to the PS4 will be somewhere between publishing to the PS3 and the iOS app store. They are lowering some of the requirements to be able to submit but every game that gets submitted will have to be reviewed by Sony to be allowed on the store.
They will not be allowing every game that gets submitted to be available on the PS4, a game will have to meet a certain level of quality to be accepted. When Sony say that they will allow indies to self publish, all that means is that indies will not require a publisher to get onto PSN (unlike the XBLA where you need a publisher), not that anyone can get their game on the platform at a click of the submit button.
As always though, this is only my understanding and until Sony release more details to the public we won’t know exactly how easy this process will be for indies and how low the bar will be to get accepted.
EDIT: Should have probably hit refresh before writing my post, I pretty much said what zombiegorilla said.