If it's getting ever increasingly harder to be successful on steam (from an indie POV), does console porting help mitigate that? I.e less games on console coming out so more likely to be seen?
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we did our own ports.
In some cases we took approach of "if it earns back the time cost of porting, then anything extra is a win".
Early days of Switch were good, as new console and fewer titles coming out. Harder to be seen now.
If can sell small physical console release thats a win too.
I have never done console ports in recent years but I know from experience that porting to mobile helps. If you have a good product, Google & Apple will support you & you easily tap hundreds of millions of players. Still depends on the game though.
I think the strategy to survive as an indie is to have your game in as many places as possible and to have multiple games. Eventually you can start to float off of it and dedicate more time. I don’t think 99% of us can rely on hits.
I think this is probably it.
Going forward, I want to make smaller polished experiences that don't take me too long but are also good, so I can have that back catalogue churning away.
I made one giant one, 3.5 years, and then one 6-7 month quick one just to practise designing and shipping something. Now they’re both coming to Steam and the giant one is coming to PS5 as soon as I can afford Unity pro 😅
They’re both Atari VCS, which is an incredibly small user base. The larger game sold about 300 copies and the smaller game about 100. They were priced differently as well.
I think it's worth mentioning that we talk a lot about scope but we often don't talk about how small a game can minimally be before it's able to be able to command a price. I think that's tricky too.
Consoles definitely helped for Farewell North, but we're talking 20-30% the revenue of Steam (combined). None of the other PC stores make up more than 1%, though we're not on Epic but I doubt that would be terribly significant either. Steam is far and away the largest, for better or worse
Also worth mentioning I did the console ports myself, but had I paid any of the going rates I've seen for a porting studio then consoles probably wouldn't have broken even for a long time
Here's a question - Would that 20/30 from consoles be enough to support you for a year or so by itself? Or would it only be possible with the steam stuff on top?
(I'm not familiar with you situation but I get the impression we are in similar, solo dev, no publisher spot?)
So consoles on their own aren't enough in my case, though I do have a publisher and live in a rather expensive city. Steam alone *probably* would be without a publisher, consoles+steam combined is thankfully enough to fund another 2 years to work on the next game
It somewhat depends on the game, but I don't think that the console market is any easier than PC - and Steam is 100% the way you go on PC. In the end building a community and having it available on multiple (strategically chosen) platforms is the best bet for success IMO.
I wonder because the defacto is steam and we small indies rarely move out of that. I'm trying to think ways out of the problems you get with being steam centric
Getting onto EGS is rough as guts like old Steam was & people hate the client so much that it doesn't even move copies of things that have no business NOT moving, like FFVIIR's original PC release.
It was so bad that the Steam upload was treated as the *real* upload, 2 years later!
I bloody well hope so. Bringing @positrongame.com to Switch in the New Year, mobile mid-year, and consoles to release when we leave Early Access. I'm lucky to be able to do this as a spare time thing though, so if no-one plays it then it's no huge loss.
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In some cases we took approach of "if it earns back the time cost of porting, then anything extra is a win".
Early days of Switch were good, as new console and fewer titles coming out. Harder to be seen now.
If can sell small physical console release thats a win too.
Going forward, I want to make smaller polished experiences that don't take me too long but are also good, so I can have that back catalogue churning away.
Here's a question - Would that 20/30 from consoles be enough to support you for a year or so by itself? Or would it only be possible with the steam stuff on top?
(I'm not familiar with you situation but I get the impression we are in similar, solo dev, no publisher spot?)
Appreciate the info too.
What about epic? Or other store fronts
It was so bad that the Steam upload was treated as the *real* upload, 2 years later!
Console / PC splits these days make me miss thingsl ike the XboxLive arcade just being a buffet for indie games and indie devs.