The Rough Road For Independent Console Developers

I picked up off the wire this morning an interesting opinion piece by former Eidos president Keith Boesky. It's partially a rant, but one that I believe is right-on – risk mitigation by publishers is one of the biggest reasons (if not the biggest reason) for developer failure.

While the article focuses on independent console developers, the problem isn't unique to them. It's also a problem for developers producing for the PC market as well. Perhaps not to the same extent as console development, but with ever increasing costs for PC games that make it to retail, publishers are becoming every bit as anal, or so my sources tell me. Right now, I haven't any solution for this, but I'm certainly interested risk mitigation for the developers themselves, so that more don't have to shut down because the publisher got cold feet.

Boesky's blog has some interesting writing of it's own, and should be on the reading list of any business developer in the games industry. Although it still seems a bit console-centric on a brief look-see.