Team Meat, best known for their indie smash hit title Super Meat Boy, says that they aren't as confident in console development, and that the next-gen systems like the upcoming PlayStation 4 have a long way to go before they'll develop a game for those systems.
Speaking to Eurogamer, the developers Tommy Refenes and Edmund McMillen shared their views on console game development and why they've opted to focus on developing their titles for the PC and tablets.
“It costs zero dollars to develop on Steam if you already have a computer,” said Tommy Refenes. “When you look at PlayStation and Xbox and Nintendo you have to buy thousand dollar dev kits and pay for certification and pay for testing and pay for localisation – you have to do all these things and at the end of the day it’s like, ‘I could have developed for other platforms and it would’ve been easier.’”
The developers stated that it's a huge risk for indie studios like theirs to develop a game for the console due to the cost of localization, testing and dev kits.
“You have to take into consideration that when you’re independent, you don’t want to take the risk of jumping on a platform that you have no idea how it’s going to do until it’s already established,” said Edmund McMillen in an interview with Eurogamer. “When you look at WiiWare, when it bloomed when World of Goo came out it was like, ‘Holy shit! This is a great platform to develop for,’ and then it was like a gold rush and everybody was jumping on WiiWare.
“What they should have done was wait a little longer to see if it would continue. Because then it just dropped and nobody cared.
“Imagine if we got put in another situation like with Xbox where we were nailed down to this contract of semi-exclusivity and we had to jump through all these hoops and kill ourselves and then pay shit-loads of money to get on a platform that’s not established yet and then it comes out and doesn’t do well – imagine that. That’s fucking horrible.”
Team Meat is currently developing their next game, Mew-Genics. It's slated for release on tablets and the PC.
