With an audience of 20,000 plus at the ongoing Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Sony Computer Entertainment America lifted the lid on some of their future plans for the Playstation brand. Within this cauldron of potential included a slew of independent titles bound for three of the company’s platforms – namely the Playstation 3, Playstation Vita and forthcoming Playstation 4.
Speaking at the conference, vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, Adam Boyes had this to say about the company’s approach to Playstation 4:
“Our process and approach in working with developers has evolved to incorporate a lot of flexibility into the process, including the way we pursue and discover new talent, help them with funding solutions and work together to deliver their best games onto PlayStation platforms.”
As a Playstation owner, I think this is great news. One of the many benefits of the Playstation Network – the company’s online store – from a developer’s perspective is the potential for publishing flexibility. Titles such as Journey and The Unfinished Swan revelled in their independent milieu, and by the sounds of things, that’s an environment Sony wants to maintain.
The games revealed at GDC include Blacklight: Retribution and Primal Carnage: Genesis, which are developed by Zombie Studios and Backlight Media, respectively. The former has been a PC exclusive hitherto but Sony plan on bringing the niche FPS to their Playstation 4 via their Pub Fund Initiative and, perhaps most importantly, the game will also be free-to-play. Joining Blacklight: Retribution is Backlight Media’s game Primal Carnage: Genesis which has been billed as a single-player episodic adventure set in a world where dinosaurs have been brought back to life. Hey, life always finds a way, right?
Some may call Sony bold for investing in these independent studios, but more than anything, it shows the company’s innovation for new intellectual properties to balance the scale against the hordes of triple-A titles. Sony Computer Entertainment America also announced Spleunky and DiveKick for both PS3 and PS Vita for this Spring and, if that wasn’t enough, a Vita exclusive in the form of infographic puzzler Metric.
I can’t want to see what developers such as Zombie Studios and Backlight Media make of the Playstation 4 and for a brief teaser on Sony’s hot-out-of-the-oven reveals, check the videos below:
Primal Carnage: Genesis
Blacklight: Retribution
