Game Developers Conference released results of a survey among European developers they held in the months prior to GDC Europe. Note that at the time the survey was made, Xbox One announced their online DRM and always connected policies, but still hadn't retracted those policies yet.
Overall, European developers were strongly interested in making games for mobile (smartphones and tablets) and PC (Windows and Mac) the most. Among their respondents, 40 % had just released a game on PC and 39 % on mobile. 49 % of them were in the middle of PC game development and 59 % on mobile development.
When asked further about mobile platforms of choice for further development, 65 % mentioned iOS, 58 % Android, 16 % Windows Phone and 7 % Blackberry. It's not clear if the survey also included Playstation Mobile, or separate Android based platforms like Ouya and GameStick.
As you can guess, next-gen consoles are not as high in the radar for European developers. 13 % were making PS4 games, with 9 % on Xbox One, 5 % on Wii U, 6 % on Vita and 1.5 % on 3DS. Subsequently, 23 % are interested in developing on the PS4, in contrast to 14 % for Xbox One, 7 % for Wii U, 9% for Vita and 2 % for 3DS. At least Vita saw a rise in interest.
It's easy to look at this data on the surface and somehow fold this into a narrative on how one platform is winning the 'system wars', but at the moment, there's actually little reason to be optimistic with these numbers. In spite of the presence of outliers like, say, the very loyal Shin'en on Nintendo systems, European developers as a whole aren't running to develop for next-gen consoles. These numbers may pick up in the following years, since it may be simply too risky for them to release next-gen games at launch.
The survey did reveal another interesting insight into the European developer community. Given the rise of games like Rovio's Angry Birds, Eve Online and Supercell's Clash of Clans, developers believe that the UK has lost ground as the center of European game development. In specific, developers overwhelmingly concurred that UK released the best games in Europe in the last 10 years, but lost ground to Finland, Germany and especially Sweden when it comes to which countries are making the best European games now. Other countries still, like France, Italy and Spain, need to catch up to their neighbors, but it is a general good sign that the opportunities for European developers have expanded so.
GDC Europe will be held in Cologne, Germany from August 19 to 21.
Source: PR Newswire
