Were these indie devs similarly worried when Sony gradually shifted focus away from them when their own 1P AAA content started to get rolling, and they increased deals with larger AAA 3P games? Any links from press circuit interviews showing as such?
Dunno; it's just really hard to care for having genuine conversations on this stuff when there could be so many bad faith actors involved who only apply these "worries" and standards when it's a specific platform holder doing them, but not any others. Kind of like the people suddenly arguing about monopolies and industry consolidation despite others like Tencent and Embracer Group regularly investing in (and acquiring) lots of teams over the years and yet nary a pique raised.
If you're about those things, keep that same energy and keep it 100% in all instances, not just selective ones. That's my stance on it.
C'mon you gotta admit they have a bit of a point. Sort of like the 1P crossgen controversy before the consoles came out where Microsoft got lambasted for publicly saying they'd still provide 1P games for XBO and One X for a while, and Sony kind of rode on that to their benefit?
But then when Sony announced that more than a handful of upcoming 1P games would be coming to PS4, a lot of those same spots argued about how it was pro-consumer and a net benefit (which it is), while never going back apologizing for their bad takes when it was just Xbox stating they were supporting crossgen with 1P content?
It really does ask the question why so-called journalists and press can't keep that same energy, or even certain developers and publishers for that matter (like the Moon Studio dev). Sometimes it's like there's a legion of weird conditionals put up for Microsoft that would either hurt them competitively or cancel out something else they're trying to do, yet the same things are never pushed unto Sony and Nintendo. And it's usually members of the press who do it, only exacerbating the problem with wild parts of the fanbases.
I'm not even necessarily saying the Boyfriend Dungeon dev here is wrong in their concerns, but it's extremely ironic they have this concern, considering GamePass as a service is what helped their game get exposure in the first place. And if they're worried about Microsoft easing up on supporting indies as they expand their 1P resources, then they'll either find other avenues to push their games through, or one of the other platform holders will pick up the slack (like Microsoft did when Sony eased off on indies).
It's just very unrealistic of them IMO to expect a platform holder to not scale back their focus on 3P indie content as they increase focus on their 1P content. As long as they aren't totally blowing indies off, though, then it should be okay. Plus, this ironically benefits customers as it forces indie games to compete for even better quality to stand out from the crowd, so the best of the best tend to get noticed and picked up by platform holders.
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