The Witness and the Necessity of Risk
For any innovation to occur, there must be risk. Business likes stability, but creative endeavors like video games cannot be stable without also becoming stale. Creating an environment that allows those willing to take on that risk to thrive will be absolutely vital in the next generation for games to continue to grow as an artistic medium. Watching the above video with Johnathan Blow, creator of Braid and upcoming title The Witness (which looks absolutely gorgeous), as well as reading his thoughts about how The Witness ended up as a PS4 exclusive, seems to give me the impression that Sony is doing a much better job of this than Microsoft. Even if the Xbox One ends up being hands down the better of the two consoles spec wise, the fact that Sony is attracting games like The Witness while Microsoft seems content (so far) in pushing out more iterations of CoD and Madden will inevitably attract gamers who prize innovation and thoughtfulness over aesthetics to chose the PS4.
Of course no one does a better job of catering to indie developers than Steam seems to, nor is there an easier platform to develop for than the PC. It’s also still way too early to be making predictions on quality of gaming line-up; even after E3 and the consoles’ releases later this year, it will still take a while for each system to really hit its stride. But still, as things lay right now, point Sony.
Addendum: Awesome poster concepts:
