Indie games can sell systems: Sony

While most believe that it’s the giant triple-A exclusives that will sell consoles, Sony’s Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida believes that even the smallest indie titles could be system-sellers.

The Sony Worldwide Studios president said that he sees indie games as the upcoming system-sellers of the present and future.

“I think Journey is a system seller in terms of the impact it makes. It may not be that people buy a PS3 to play Journey – but they hear about other people playing it,” said Yoshida.

“It proves the breadth of the platform, and I think it proves to non-gamers how broad games can be. That’s a wonderful thing.”

PlayStation Europe president Jim Ryan echoed Yoshida’s point, explaining exactly how important indies are to the future of Playstation.

“Those games have definitely been platform enhancing. If two or three [make the impact Journey has], you have got something that will definitely be an asset to our platform, and we are in the business of exploiting assets like that.”

Yoshida also explained the appeal in working with indie devs and the company’s strategy to remain involved in the indie scene.

“It’s refreshing to work with these small guys – they come up with some great ideas,” said Yoshida.

“They are typically small teams – some of them are just one person. They don’t have to go through all the approvals or presentations we do. They just make things. That’s the difference between us and them. The immediacy and that quickness. We are trying to make our platform more accessible. Because they have choices, right? If we make things difficult they can go elsewhere and find another place to put their content.”

Sony recently revealed a number of big indie games coming to the PS3 PS4 and PS Vita.