Sony: Showing indie games at E3 is “almost meaningless”
Jim Ryan, the global boss of Sony Interactive Entertainment, has been talking a lot these days, defending the company’s stance and actions. This time, the executive gave a controversial comment again, saying that presenting indie titles in their conferences is no longer so important.
During an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Ryan mentioned that showing indie game clips in presentations like E3 takes time out and the method does not allow viewers to understand enough about games.
“One of the things we have realised is that these video collages of ten indie games shown in a minute, is almost meaningless. Nobody can really learn anything about the games in that sort of time. It is almost viewed as wasted time,” Ryan stated
So, what happened to all that support that Sony was swearing to small studios? According to Ryan, independent titles remain important, but they have so much content to show that sometimes they need to sacrifice the presentation of some games, like Gran Turismo.
“There was a time and a place, in the early stages of the life of PS4, to make statements. It was more about making a statement that we are serious about the indies, and that we are doing this and that with the indies. No Man’s Sky and so on and so forth, which broke out from that and carved its own niche. You know, right now, we have tonnes of indie content on the platform. And the fact that we elected, along with many other things such as Gran Turismo and PlayLink, not to give it its own spot on the stage this week, in no way means it is not important, or it is not there, or we don’t worry about it.”
The executive continued by saying that by E3 2017 the company wanted the players to focus on other things they have been preparing. He said that “it was just good to talk about in 2013/2014. It is less relevant now. We have VR to talk about now, for example.”
In recent days, Ryan has commented that backward compatibility is something very demanded, but that very few use it, which generated mixed comments among the users; Even Mike Ybarra of Xbox replied to the executive. Also said that few developers will use all the power of the Xbox One X and justified the absence of PlayStation in cross-play titles with Nintendo and Microsoft.