Tim Schafer: Indie Community Moving Away from XBLA, PSN

Double Fine founder and all-around gaming legend Tim Schafer believes independent developers are increasingly reluctant to release games on the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Store, due to the high expenses and lack of control those platforms provide.

“Ever since I played Geometry Wars I thought, what a great new portal," Schafer said in an interview with Hookshot Inc. “But it seems that this year, the idea didn’t explode like it should have. Back when Castle Crashers came out, it seemed it was going to grow and grow."

Despite his initial optimism, Schafer believes there's been little proof that the digital storefronts will live up to their potential.

"I just wish there was more support, more marketing, more placement on the dashboard. It could have been our own little Sundance Film festival, a great sandbox for indie development.But the indie community is now moving elsewhere; we’re figuring out how to fund and distribute games ourselves, and we’re getting more control over them."

That exodus, Schafer says, was sparked by the fact that the process of releasing a game on XBLA or PSN is cluttered with slow-moving bureaucracy and expensive red tape. 

"Those systems as great as they are, they’re still closed. You have to jump through a lot of hoops, even for important stuff like patching and supporting your game. Those are things we really want to do, but we can’t do it on these systems. I mean, it costs $40,000 to put up a patch – we can’t afford that! Open systems like Steam, that allow us to set our own prices, that’s where it’s at, and doing it completely alone like Minecraft. That’s where people are going.”

Whether his forecast will prove true remains to be seen, but his quoted figure — $40,000 to release a single patch — is definitely evidence that console digital releases are far riskier than the average gamer might assume.