Sony exec crows about PlayStation’s indie love: 1,000 publishers and growing

Everyone knows that one person who can’t stop bragging about their new flame. In the corporate world, PlayStation is that love-stricken motormouth, and indie developers are the object of its affections.

Perhaps PlayStation actually has something worth going on about; today, its vice president of developer and publisher relations wrote a blog post celebrating that it now has 1,000 developers licensed to self-publish on its platforms. These game creators can publish their games directly to the PlayStation Store. This includes the freedom to set their own price and release date, retaining ownership of their intellectual property, and other benefits such as advertising on the PlayStation Blog.

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Adam Boyes, the executive mentioned above, said, “We’ve already seen some great content hit PlayStation 4 – from crafting waffles in Don’t Starve to scaring the pants off of people with Outlast. We’re looking forward to some of this year’s self-published titles like Octodad, Transistor, N++, Galak-Z, Rogue Legacy, Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, and The Witness, and you know we’re all already playing a metric arrow ton of TowerFall Ascension.”

PlayStation released a video today to accompany the announcement, complete with figures celebrating PS4’s early success and feel-good music. In his post, Boyes also mentioned meeting with new “up-and-coming talent” at last week’s GDC conference. It seems like the company is determined to continue the trend of over 200 new self-licensed developers in North America since its latest console was unveiled last February.

Indie games are becoming increasingly important to Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo as they battle for exclusive content and big publishers increasingly shy away from making console-exclusive deals in favor of reaching a larger market. In the last year, PlayStation’s marketing rhetoric has taken a major turn toward promoting indie developers. With today’s milestone, it can back up its talk, at least for now.