Insanely hard open world zombie survival game DayZ was a runaway critical hit on PC, despite only being an Arma 2 mod. After the success, the mod’s creator, Dean Hall, began development on a standalone PC version (which still has no release date) and, if we’re lucky, it could come to PS4.
Speculation that the game would come to Sony’s platform originally kicked off at the February reveal, when the above image of the PS4 UI showed a player with the username “DayZ100”, but the rumors were denied.
Now, Eurogamer has asked Hall about whether the game will come to PS4 or Xbox One:
Yeah, we talked to both of them. But, as I’m sure you’re aware, Sony lets you self-publish and they don’t make you pay for updates. Microsoft requires you to have a publisher. They have no digital distribution strategy and they require you to pay $10,000, or whatever it is, for updates.
The fact that indies have had to pay for updates, including critical patches, on both PS3 and Xbox 360 has put off a huge number of smaller developers, as well as causing many games to go unfixed. Over the past one and a half years, however, Sony has cut back on the fee, making exceptions and doing away with it for PS Pub fund games. It now seems like they are planning to get rid of it altogether.
He was then asked more specifically about Sony:
Oh, absolutely. We like them. I like what I saw on the PS4, I like what I saw on the Xbox in a lot of cases as well. I’m not shitting on them. I’m kind of hopeful that Microsoft has just forgot to talk about its indie support. Maybe I’m being a bit naive.
And then about PS4:
That’s definitely something we’d look at, but we have to do the PC version first. Once we get the alpha out, that’s a good time for us to run it up on a [PS4] dev kit and see what happens.
With this new generation of architecture it’s not a problem for us. It’s totally achievable. The only barriers are the ones console manufacturers put up in the way of indie devs. That’s the only barrier now. I’d love to see this on Xbox Live. I’d love to see it on PS4.
As for the Wii U…
I don’t know. I haven’t really looked into it much. I doubt it.
Would you like DayZ to come to PS4? Has Sony taken the right approach with indies? Share your thoughts in that there comment box below.
