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Sony promises indie-friendly PSN: 'We believe in smaller devs'

Platform holder reaches out to indie studios with the promise of a better publishing model

The PlayStation business will revise its current digital publishing model in the hope it can foster more support from indie studios and establish a more creative-driven platform.

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As a means to setting out his philosophical approach to indie studio support, PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida emphasised how important he considers indie games have become.

"We believe in smaller developers," Yoshida told Gamasutra.

"They are very creative and they go out of the norm to do something really amazing. So we really want to make it easier for them to come to our platform and publish. And we know there are many things we can do, in talking with these guys and asking what they want us to do."

Yoshida said that the PlayStation Mobile platform is one example of Sony's recent outreach to the development community, adding that indies don't need to buy a dev kit if they want to publish on PS Mobile.

"It's totally software driven, and they can develop games on PC, for example. And once you decide to publish it, you want to test it on the final hardware, but you don't have to acquire a pricey dev kit," he said.

For the approach to the PS4, however, this devkit barrier will remain. But Yoshida insists it's a necessity and that Sony is trying to find new ways to making indie development on the next PlayStation even easier.

"The approach to PS4 we're internally working on is, I hope to see somewhere in-between the current model that we have on PS3 and the PS Mobile model," he said.

"We could continue and go and expand the PS Mobile approach, but the beauty of developing games on console is we allow the developers to go really deep into the hardware, and to unlock the potential. And so in order for us to do that, the developer has to have the dev kit to work on. So at least initially, we have to provide the dev kit to make games on PS4."

The company has built the PlayStation 4 hardware with technologies similar to those used on PCs, meaning that most developers will likely be more familiar with the tech.

The PS4 release date is set for "holiday 2013", likely across Japan, Europe and the US.

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