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Braid Designer: Sony Seeks "More Artful" Games For PSN

Braid debuted on Xbox Live but eventually came to the PlayStation Network. And developer Jonathan Blow says there are differences between the XBLA and PSN.

In speaking to Edge (via CVG), Blow stated that most Indie Games on Live aren't "very good" and that Sony is willing to take more risks when it comes to downloadable experiences. He admits it's easier for indie devs to get their games onto Live, but Sony seems to be looking for more accomplished, "artful" titles. Said Blow:

"Microsoft has provided the lower barrier to entry with Xbox Live Indie Games, but most of them are not very good - I don't think that's a controversial statement.

So if you're thinking about the impact of indie games on the whole forum of games then probably Sony has done more because of the way they curate the games they put on there - they're actually looking for games that are artful or experimental."

Blow goes on to reference Linger in Shadows, which he believes would never have seen the light of day on the XBLA. He also thinks that "the majority of games released on XBLA recently, most of them tank, they lose money." Currently, Blow is working on a new title, The Witness, that will be available on the PS3 and 360 next year. We can't wait for that one.

Given what we have on the PSN now, it's difficult to disagree with this guy's observation; as he says, we "don't think that's a controversial statement."

Tags: psn, playstation network, live, braid

12/22/2010 8:58:04 PM Ben Dutka

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Comments (38 posts)

The Doom
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 @ 9:12:32 PM
Reply

Not to sound like a fanboy, but at least XBL gave players a chance to make something and get paid for it. Plus there's a demo for EVERY SINGLE acarade/indie game. What's stopping PSN from doing that? :P

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sawao_yamanaka
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 @ 10:16:46 PM

He's talking about sony taking risks with what games they publish. Heavy rain, flower, flow, ico and other such games. Microsoft is less likely to back up indies with their money. As for the indie scene on XBL microsoft does very little with that. It goes through peer review and not microsoft. A lot of their games are badly made as well only made for a quick buck like a lot of the shovelware on the app store.

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Ben Dutka PSXE [Administrator]
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 @ 10:29:24 PM

Yeah, I think you're sort of missing the point of Blow's comments.

But you're definitely right that we should have more demos for PSN games.

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maxpontiac
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 11:02:52 AM

Good point on the PSN needing more demo's.

Another good point is that the Arcade Demo's aren't technically free since Live members pay $60.00 per year to get access to them.

Just thought I would bring that up.

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Hezzron
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 @ 10:08:13 PM
Reply

I don't think it's controversial either. It's very accurate of what Sony has been doing since day one.

However, there might be some 360 zealots who get upset with that statement...oh, wait a second... The 360 crowd must not even play them because "most of them are not very good, most of them tank and they lose money".

It's OK. They probably don't even know what he's talking about.

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Scarecrow
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 @ 10:22:35 PM
Reply

Sony is quality, nothing new here. It's good that a dev is willing to say it openly though.

ps1 classics alone > xbl

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Jawknee
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 @ 11:05:23 PM

"ps1 classics alone > xbl"

Indeed.

Agree with this comment 7 up, 0 down Disagree with this comment

Qwarktast1c
Friday, December 24, 2010 @ 6:10:58 AM

i think XBLA's name fits itself just fine. it's X-BLAH

lol

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WorldEndsWithMe
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 12:00:11 AM
Reply

Doesn't Microsoft provide the "lower barrier" for everything?

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Qubex
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 12:35:13 AM

To some extent, yes... its size and market penetration helps a great deal - almost by default...

Q!

"play.experience.enjoy"
Last edited by Qubex on 12/23/2010 12:35:23 AM

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WorldEndsWithMe
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 2:08:53 AM

just making sport ;)

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Fane1024
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 3:22:23 AM

Usually, MS are control freaks (see UTIII), which is why I was so surprised at the indie games initiative and Rock Band Network. Both seem like something Sony would do, not MS.

MS insist on ensuring the poor quality of their products. :D
Last edited by Fane1024 on 12/23/2010 3:24:50 AM

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Lawless SXE
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 1:01:27 AM
Reply

Much respect to Sony for trying to expand this industry.
Peace.

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JonahFalcon
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 1:20:42 AM
Reply

Which is why games like Limbo, Axel & Pixel, etc appeared on PSN and not XBLA? Oh, wait...

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WorldEndsWithMe
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 2:10:19 AM

yeah a couple good ones don't beat out a lot of great ones.

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PorkChopGamer
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 6:14:43 AM

First, Limbo is amazing. Well beyond 'good'. Don't dismiss it because it plays on a different shaped plastic box. It's also sold pretty well. 500,000 at last count. I find it interesting that Blow is saying this when his own artistic game also garnered alot of success on XBLA. Microsoft didn't stand in his way and say 'No guns, no releasey!!' as many of you may try say that is how MS is. Sony's equivalent to MS's Indie are the Minis. Any successful gems come out of there yet? I think the success or failure of the recent XBLA games can be attributed more to Ray Muzyka recent 'Too many games.' statement than PSN being a better breeding ground for arthouse games. And from a person that owns more than 60 purchased PSN titles, XBLA still has better variety in its catalog.

Edit: Though XBLA doesn't have Super Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle Cars, my vote for best MP in a downloadable game. Ever. The matches on there are just awesome and it takes more skill than any shooter ever required. And it gets my vote for 'Best song on the XMB'.
Last edited by PorkChopGamer on 12/23/2010 6:28:46 AM

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Underdog15
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 9:01:17 AM

My PS3 is made of metal.

But joking aside, I really do have to agree that Sony has a ton of great Indie games. I sold my 360 years ago before the marketplace really became anything, so I can't speak for Microsoft. But if there's only enough top notch Indie games to count on 1 or 2 hands, I think it's easy to conclude Sony's doing better. But again, I don't know much about the XBLA games.
Last edited by Underdog15 on 12/23/2010 9:06:26 AM

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BikerSaint
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 4:31:39 PM

JonahFalcon,

You forgot "Alan Wake"!

But other than those 3, not much else has been innovative on the 360 in a long while, IMO.
Last edited by BikerSaint on 12/23/2010 4:33:06 PM

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___________
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 1:28:41 AM
Reply

thats one thing i love about sony, there willing to take a leap of faith.
a game like ICO, or heavy rain would never see the light of day on the 360 because its just too risky.
hell, look how they turned out!
only thing that needs to be improved on the PSN is a search bar, so instead of having to spend 10 minutes finding what i want i can just type it into a search bar and it comes straight up.
that, and the servers.
there so god dam freaking slow!!!!!!!!!
been downloading the DS2 demo since early yesterday for crying out loud and its only done freaking 300 MBs!!!!!!!!
30+ hours to download 300MBs?
your sh*tting me right?

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Underdog15
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 1:44:56 AM

You should consider the "Search" feature in the PSN store... it's at the top right....

And I downloaded an HD movie at 1.3 GB in size in just over an hour. I don't think it's Sony with the bad internet.

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Fane1024
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 3:32:00 AM

Yeah, I consistently get at least 1 MB / sec from PSN, even during last night's heavy load.

Have you checked whether your router is slowing the process? I'm not the person to describe it (High?), but it has to do with your port settings IIRC.

Last night, I downloaded over 10 GB in about five hours. ME2 took 1 hour 20 minutes.


Last edited by Fane1024 on 12/23/2010 3:38:40 AM

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Xzer0
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 4:55:24 AM

Yeah dude I think it is your poor connection. Yesterday I had downloaded ME2 demo and it took 30-35 minutes.

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___________
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 7:52:04 AM

its nothing to do with my router or net because i have no problems with any of my other devices.
i can download a full game, i downloaded mafia 2 off steam in like under a hour!
i use to download demos off my 360 when i had one, they were always done in a half hour.
even my iphone, granted the apps are not 1GB but there still a fair size and there always fast.
i have always had internet issues with my ps3 ever since my launch model i have had that was a 60GB than i had 2 80GBs and a few slims.
every single one i have had the same problem, really slow downloads and i constantly keep getting errors and booted out of PSN.
5002AD23 most of the time is the error i get, i ring sony to ask what it means and they play dumb.
i have even had a friend of mine who is a computer networking genius he does all the networking stuff for the commonwealth bank set up my router and all my devices.
no matter what i do, the internet off my ps3 is dead slow!

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Underdog15
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 9:03:32 AM

Maybe you could try port forwarding (if you are using wi-fi). It's pretty easy to look up on the internet which ports your PS3 is using. That might make a huge difference in download speeds. I know it makes a massive difference when I do big downloads on my PC.
Last edited by Underdog15 on 12/23/2010 9:03:58 AM

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Simcoe
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 10:03:36 AM

Oh ___________, what would a day be like without you complaining about something!

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WolfCrimson
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 2:42:45 PM

Amazing? (tongue-in-cheek)
Last edited by WolfCrimson on 12/23/2010 2:43:16 PM

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Fane1024
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 5:39:17 PM

That was my point. If you're experiencing different download times for PSN and XBLA, you are probably one of the people who have the wrong settings on your router.

It isn't Sony's servers (unless they're radically different in Australia).

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___________
Friday, December 24, 2010 @ 7:02:17 AM

ive got all my ports forwarded, i even rang sony and got all the ports they use off them.

o,n Simcoe shut up, im sure you would be complaining if it took you 4+ days to download a single freaking demo.
selfish prick!

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Underdog15
Friday, December 24, 2010 @ 2:08:04 PM

I guess the only thing left is to call your service provider. Ask them about not the download service your paying for, but for the actual service delivered on average.

Like, for example, I pay for 10mb/second download speed internet, but the actual delivery is more like 6.5-8mb/sec on average. See, it's 10mb/sec based on x-number of users on at any given point. Most of the time, there are more than "X" causing accessibility slow-down and you not getting what you pay for. They may not have enough servers leaving you believing you're paying for a service you aren't actually getting.

Anyways, that would be the last place to check. You really should try to get nothing less than 5mb/sec of ACTUAL speed (not what it says on your bill). Maybe even more!

Hope that helps.

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BikerSaint
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 2:12:49 AM
Reply

Hell, I DL'ed the demo's for LBP2 & Mass Effect(both over 2000MB each) & it took me over 6 hours, but I wasn't Sony's fault.

It's my semi-crappy (up to)3 Mps DSL(Plus, not to mention that I was also streaming Netflix on my 360 at the same time, while also surfing gaming news & sales sites, and D'l'ing vids & trailers on my computer).
Last edited by BikerSaint on 12/23/2010 2:13:40 AM

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Maiq The Liar
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 6:13:42 AM

The wait is worth it, they're fantastic!

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Beamboom
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 7:19:56 AM
Reply

I have no idea how the x-box market looks like, but if it's anything like the Android market who is *flooded* with near-identical-apps then I do understand the problem.

However I would really like to see something "in between" the Android market (where it seems almost anyone can post their software) and PSN (who I understand is very controlled by Sony). Seeing what software an open platform like Linux can breed it would be very interesting to see what the PS community could have produced on the PS3, had it been more accessible as a dev platform.

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Thinker
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 9:57:41 AM
Reply

According to Jonathan Blow himself, The CVG article is made up of out-of-context quotes given by Jonathan Blow and Chris Heckler in an interview to Edge. CVG took some license with the interview quotes to turn it into an article which would garner more hits from the 360 & PS3 zealots.

Here's Blow's opinion in his own words:
http://the-witness.net/news/?p=701

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PorkChopGamer
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 12:50:59 PM

And there you have it, folks.

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WorldEndsWithMe
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 1:41:33 PM

well you can't trust Edge anyway.

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BeezleDrop
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 1:19:32 PM
Reply

The PSN does need more indie games, if there is one thing I noticed it was pretty cool games on LIVE when my buddy was searching around on it. Not to say the PSN doesn't have any, but we need more! Braid is one of those games that keeps bringing me back, because I cannot solve the puzzles!

But really, Sony craves innovation, and the Xbox doesn't, they want will sell. More of the same.

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Alienange
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 1:38:28 PM
Reply

Did it take him releasing his game on XBLA FIRST to realize this?

Buddy, do yourself a favor and put your artsy fartsy games out exclusively on PSN. You can't imagine the number of gamers that appreciate that stuff and will keep you funded.

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Kevin555
Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 8:55:02 PM
Reply

Both online stores offer greatness but as far as innovation is concerned, PS3 is the better platform with the exception of XBLA's Limbo an to an extent, Alan Wake (if you find dissolving ghost people with your flashlight innovative).

It's not just PSN that innovates though, it's the games that SONY are willing to take a risk on; Heavy Rain, Little Big Planet, Flower & Lair (even though that game flopped), It shows SONY have the balls to try different approaches & play around with ideas in a gaming world that suffocates from the new sars virus known as FPS fever.

There is no fanboy heroics involved here. I think the majority; PS3 fans, 360 fans & neutral gamers alike will all agree that SONY is the more innovative, there isn't much to argue there imo.

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