Sony Europe to hold events for indie developers

Sony Computer Entertainment's European arm will begin to hold indie developer events on a quarterly basis, potentially starting this September, said senior account manager Agostino Simonetta in an interview with Develop.

The events will take place at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's headquarters in London, and while they'll be geared toward European indies, they'll be open to all.

According to Sony, developers will be able to gather at the meetups to hear the latest news about developing on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita, as well as discuss subjects such as the PlayStation Network and the worldwide install bases of Sony systems.

"You know we do these things very regularly with all our partners, but with the indie community, it is so vast and they are spread out, that it is hard for me to go and work with developer days in the Middle East," said Simonetta.

"We are really accelerating and changing the way we approach this," he added. "So before was more of a narrow cast, now there is a real opportunity for us to go what I call broadcast — a lot more visibility to be able to answer the questions."

Microsoft announced yesterday that it will allow for self-publishing on Xbox One, and said that every Xbox One unit will be usable as a developer kit. The latter functionality won't ship with the system at launch, but is targeted to be available within the console's first year of existence. A Sony representative confirmed to Polygon yesterday that the company has been loaning PS4 dev kits to indie developers for free, and highlighted the efforts of the company's Developer Relations team in fostering indie development on PlayStation platforms.

"Self-publishing has been available on PlayStation platforms for over five years, so it's nothing new," said the spokesperson.