Mark Cerny: PS4 “Will Return to the Freedom and Broad Content That Made PlayStation Unforgettable” in Many Ways

Back in July, Mark Cerny gave a keynote speech at the Develop conference in Brighton. That conference is where he talked about the PS4, a giant DualShock 4 controller, and how there’s more in the hardware than a PC. Prior to talking to our very own Sebastian Moss, Cerny was interviewed by Develop magazine, which was published in the August 2013 issue (via Develop-Online).

Discussing the PS4 games themselves, Cerny said “heavy content [such as Mark’s favorite genres like JRPGs or games with lots of content like Skyrim] will still thrive… but in many ways we will return to the freedom and broad content that made PlayStation unforgettable in the first place.”

One of the ways they’re making PlayStation unforgettable is attracting indie developers to their systems. Explaining exactly what an indie is to Sony, Mark said, “We at SCE are calling the smaller, nimbler titles ‘indie’. So if it’s not done with a few hundred people and outsourcing it’s called indie – even if it’s in-house like Journey, or some guy at his house.”

Cerny then continued by talking about bringing indie games to the attention of gamers, and the costs of advertising for bigger titles:

It’s healthy to elevate the visibility of the smaller titles. The bigger games have substantial marketing budgets anyway. The middle is not doing so well, but the high end is doing $20m to $50m in advertising.

If we can help to elevate the smaller titles it creates a healthier environment. For developers, if you have been doing indie development on PC now you can bring those titles to the PlayStation platforms. It also means that if you have been working on triple-A development and have been looking to a way to give a broader or deeper contribution then you can now do that on a small team as well.

To you, what defines an ‘indie’? Let us know in the comments below.

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