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Why don't Indie devs make games for old consoles?

Drakortha

Drakortha

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This is probably a stupid question, but it randomly came to my mind a moment ago. Is there a reason Indie dev's can't produce games that work on old consoles? For example; Playstation 1.

There's so many indie dev's trying to cash in on our nostalgia by making PC games that mimic graphics from old hardware. I wonder why don't they actually do it for real on a technical level. Is it a hardware/software licensing issue? Physical media issue? would it be too niche? or is it something else?
 
Falksi

Falksi

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Drakortha said:
I had no idea anyone was doing that. I guess I've been living under a rock.
Click to expand...
Some of the best games of recent years have been available as Carts for the SEGA Mega Drive (and some were initially developed for that system too, despite then getting ports on to other systems such as Switch later)...
  • Xeno Crisis
  • Tanzer
  • Demons of Asteborg
  • Paprium
  • Pier Solar & The Great Architects
  • Life On Mars
  • The Cursed Knight
czsxPRm.jpg
 

AndyS

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Sep 11, 2013
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615
Drakortha said:
I had no idea anyone was doing that. I guess I've been living under a rock.
Click to expand...
It helps to keep up with sites like https://www.indieretronews.com/ or look at forums dedicated to classic systems, like AtariAge for all the old Atari systems or the Lemon sites for Commodore stuff. The guys making these sorts of games have an interest in the hardware itself that I'm not sure your typical retrogame indie dev shares.
 
InD_ImaginE

InD_ImaginE

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Pathfinder: Wrath
Drakortha said:
This is probably a stupid question, but it randomly came to my mind a moment ago. Is there a reason Indie dev's can't produce games that work on old consoles? For example; Playstation 1.

There's so many indie dev's trying to cash in on our nostalgia by making PC games that mimic graphics from old hardware. I wonder why don't they actually do it for real on a technical level. Is it a hardware/software licensing issue? Physical media issue? would it be too niche? or is it something else?
Click to expand...

The simple answer is that they want to make money out of it.

As pointed out there are some projects of actually making games for old console still and they are selling as cartridge. But selling it like this is banking on being a novelty product. In Steam you can reach thousand times the exposure and potential customer.
 

Hammer Of The Heretics

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Oct 18, 2022
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Another hypothesis: it's easier to make a retro-styled game on modern hardware than to make the same game on old hardware. Newer, more standardized development tools. More memory and CPU, so less need for optimization. You would only go to the extra trouble of developing for old hardware if you had a specific interest in it, and most indie devs don't.
 
Unkillable Cat

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
Hammer Of The Heretics said:
Another hypothesis: it's easier to make a retro-styled game on modern hardware than to make the same game on old hardware. Newer, more standardized development tools. More memory and CPU, so less need for optimization. You would only go to the extra trouble of developing for old hardware if you had a specific interest in it, and most indie devs don't.
Click to expand...

THIS.

The devs who made a name for themselves in the 1980s coding games on 8-bit systems (just to name an example group) automatically learned a great deal about optimization and conservation, i.e. making every byte count, and count large.

During the mobile gaming boom of the early 00s, these same developers found work in coding complex games for tiny platforms, because they could squeeze them in there.

And optimization takes time.

Nowadays it's mostly just throwing assets into Generic Gaming Engine, fiddling with some settings to get the feel and the look just right, and out pops another PS1-styled first-person horror game. Dozens of them have been released just this year alone. There are both YT-channels and Twitch-streamers who enjoy playing through these games, and sometimes a game comes along that is actually fun to play.

But if you want to find devs making game for retro platforms, itch io is where you start.
 
Azdul

Azdul

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Langley, Virginia
You can legally make a new game for Atari or SEGA consoles. Atari officially allows it and SEGA does not care.

Sony and Nintendo do not allow unlicensed games and can sue you, so why bother ?
 
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