After an international survey published yesterday claimed that devs found the PSN easier to develop for than XBLA, another independent studio survey claims that twice as many UK devs are working on PlayStation Network games than XBLA titles.
TIGA, the British trade group, surveyed around a 100 studios across the UK, and found that approximately 30 were developing for PSN, while 16 were working on XBLA. The results also showed that XBLA was only marginally more popular than Nintendo’s WiiWare platform. One should note, however, that Sony has five internal games studios in Britain, compared to Microsoft’s two.
Consoles overall were less popular than the iPhone (67% of the developers), iPad (45%) and Facebook (41%), showing how these platforms have become a haven for smaller developers. Due to these digital platforms, and the poor economy, the average cost of development has dropped to £2.4 million, while AAA games cost upwards of £20 million.
With Sony investing in smaller developers, its library is sure to continue to grow, but may face tough competition if Microsoft simplifies the XBL development process.
[Via]
