14 DAY TRIAL // A recent TIGA survey shows that game developers are expressing an increasing interest in console development, due to the solid sales of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 platforms.
TIGA's Toolbox Report, as reported by GameIndustry, surveyed a number of 100 UK-based developers in regard to their current and planned projects, with the results pointing to a pretty interesting overall trend.
The survey shows that, for the time being, 17 percent of developers are working on Xbox One games and 15 percent on PlayStation 4 titles, but in the future, those figures will increase by a factor of three, with 52 percent admitting plans of making an Xbox One game and 48 of the interviewed developers stating that they intend to work on the PlayStation 4.
The legacy of the past few years is still a strong presence among those interviewed, with the iPad and iPhone still being the dominant platforms, respondents revealing that 73 percent and 72 percent of their projects are geared towards those devices.
The answers also pointed to a future decrease of 8 percent and 7 percent respectively, in the number of projects aimed at Apple's two system, with the same trend being recorded as far as PC games are concerned, with 63 percent of current projects targeting the platform as opposed to 48 percent in the future.
The incentives to go for console development are none to shabby, as the PC and mobile markets have been criticized a lot lately, with the difficult market conditions for indie developers being the topic of many discussions.
The so-called "race to zero" on mobile devices, and the pressure to keep lowering the price of small games on PC due to massive sales, bundles and the sheer volume of titles released, added to the mounting trend to implement free-to-play or freemium business models are forcing many indie devs to reconsider their platform of choice.
Over the course of the last few years, various surveys as well as statistical data have shown that PC and mobile devices were the platforms that developers were most interested in, but the trend seems to be reversing thanks to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
The advantages of making a game for consoles are numerous, first of all because there is much, much less competition and you have a chance of people actually finding your game, especially this early in the systems' life cycle, when their ecosystems are sparse enough that pretty much any new game is newsworthy, as opposed to the situation on PC and mobile platforms.
Sure, there are also bigger costs associated with console development and some additional hoops to jump through, but in the end, all the indies releasing their games on the next-gen platforms say that it all pays off.