Grin praises XBLA/PSN development, dislikes submission process
Stockholm, Sweden-based Grin, developer of last year's superb downloadable title Bionic Commando: Rearmed, recently told Develop magazine that while XBLA and PSN give smaller developers a chance to get just as much exposure as the largest publishers, the process of actually getting a game onto them can be daunting.
Grin CEO Bo Andersson expressed, "It's really nice that, whoever you are, you can get the same sort of attention [on XBLA and PSN]. I don't think the big publishers can muscle their way in for more exposure on the platform; it's a level playing field. That promotes quality." His brother Ulf, the company's creative director, admited that actually getting onto that field can be tricky.
"It's still much easier to make digital games on the PC than it is with XBLA and PSN. With the consoles' online platforms, Sony and Microsoft have their own rules and regulations to follow, and you have to have a pretty robust [bug testing] session to get your game out there," he said. "That's something which smaller independent developers run into." Sounds like Sony's Pub Fund could be quite useful for bringing on the extra bug-squashing muscle.
