Which Is The Best Platform for Indies?

No two platforms are the same and as a consumer, if you love indies, you mightn’t be sure which is the best to invest your time in money.

So which of the major platforms is the best for indie gaming?

PC

The “master race” will always claim they’ve got the best platform for any genre of game and the best lineup of games and I certainly can’t argue with that.

While there are console-exclusive games, there are far more games available for PC than any for any of the consoles currently on the market. No matter what game you dream of, it’s more likely to have a PC version and no console ports than to be a console exclusive with no PC version.

However, this is also the biggest problem with PC gaming, finding decent indies. Since anything can be put on Steam, there’s an overwhelming amount of utter rubbish on the platform from titles that barely have the right to call themselves games.

While there are many fantastic indie games on PC, it can be difficult for the real gems to surface.

Xbox One

Microsoft’s underperforming follow-up to the hugely successful 360 can hardly boast to be the indie machine its predecessor was.

While the Xbox 360 with Xbox Live Arcade had amazing titles like Terraria, Retro City Rampage, Monaco, Dust: An Elysian Tale, Castle Crashers, and Fez, I’m yet to hear anyone tell me there’s an indie game on the Microsoft Store that I just have to play.

That said, it did have the console exclusivity for Cuphead, which still shows no signs of being ported to the PS4.

PS4

While Sony’s eighth-generation console has outsold the Xbox One by a long way, it’s still far from being a haven for indies. The odd indie game as a freebie for PS+ subscribers doesn’t cut it for us either.

Browsing the Playstation Store from your console is awful and it’s unlikely that you’ll stumble onto a hidden indie masterpiece to tell your friends about. In fact, it almost seems that Sony couldn’t care less about indie games.

Switch

If you’re interested in indie games, you’ve probably heard people talking about the Switch. While Nintendo’s hybrid console can’t compete with the Xbox One, PS4, or a gaming PC in terms of raw power, or does have the advantage of being portable.

Furthermore, indie games are rarely big budget projects which means that they rarely involve cutting edge graphics, state of the art AI, or require an insanely powerful machine to run them.

While Nintendo has been focusing on indie titles (or Nindies as they like to call them), the eShop is running the risk of becoming far too similar to Steam for my liking.

The Verdict

PC has, and probably always will have, the best selection of indie games for all tastes, but if you prefer to play your indies on a console, you have to get a Switch. After all, it’s cheaper, portable, and Nintendo are pushing their Nindies.