Sony makes appeal to indie game devs

Following on this morning's E3 press conference from Microsoft, expectations were high for Sony to differentiate itself from its main competitor in a meaningful way. To do that, Sony hit the ground running, opening its press conference with an appeal to qualitative game design, deliberately invoking buzzwords viewers were sure to recall from Microsoft's presser -- graphics, realism, cloud computing -- and contrasted this with some tasteful soundbites on community-friendly design. This overture didn't last, as once the conference was underway it was all dubstep, polished graphics on enormous screens, and fast cutting of triple-A game footage. And then Jack Tretton took the stage to tell us about... the PlayStation Vita. However, after the detour, Sony got back to how the PlayStation 4 was going to matter to indies. Opening this segment was Supergiant Games' Transistor, and then brief previews of console versions for Klei's Don't Starve, Wild Stallions' Octodad, Red Barrels' Outlast and OddWorld New 'n Tasty, a new installment into the cult classic OddWorld franchise. "We're developing the world's best indie game portfolio," said Sony VP of third-party relations, Adam Boyes. He proceeded to confirm that independents would be able to self-publish on the platform, in direct contrast to the Xbox One. Naturally, there were considerable triple-A offerings on display. Showcases for triple-A titles including Quantic Dream's The Dark Sorcerer and Sony Santa Monica's The Order: 1886 led the charge for what Shuhei Yoshida promised was a sampling of strong original IPs for the platform. In all, Yoshida said that "one-third" of the 20 announced games in the PlayStation 4's pipeline would be new IPs, with a strong showing from indies among that number.