It appears that European developers, who have become more and more prominent in the video game industry, will be focused more on the PlayStation 4 than the console's chief rival, the Xbox One.
This comes from a survey taken at the Game Developers Conference in Europe, which asked over 300 members of the European video game industry various questions about their current and future development plans. These results have been shared with IGN, and represented a critical sector of the video game industry. However, the survey was completed before Microsoft vetoed their DRM and used game policies, so the results may have changed in the time since.
Overall, at the time of the survey, 13 percent of those polled said that they were currently developing a PlayStation 4 game, with 9 percent claiming the same for a Xbox One title and 5 percent doing the same for the Wii U. When asked if they planned on working on future titles, 23 percent claimed they were doing so for the PlayStation 4, 14 percent were plotting something similar for the Xbox One, and the Wii U trailed once again with 7 percent.
However, the real winners were mobile games and PC games, who the majority of those surveyed claimed to be working on titles for. A solid 66 percent of those partaking in the survey said that they were planning to develop a mobile game. A further 53 percent claimed the same for PC games.
This is because of the restrictive costs that make it impossible for smaller studios to develop games for the next-gen consoles, as the hardware is too new and not yet cost effective to invest in. Instead, the booming mobile market is attracting those studios both large and small who are interested in capturing a slice of the freemium pie. PC games offer a similar route, with services such as Steam giving developers a chance to digitally distribute their game to a hungry crowd of PC gamers eager to try out the next big indie titles.
While the Xbox One may have trailed when this survey first took place, now more developers may hitch their wagon to the Xbox One now that it does not have the extremely unpopular DRM and used games policies. With games such as Battlefield 4, Crysis, and the almighty Angry Birds all coming from Europe, this continent could be a tastemaker for what developers in other major regions such as Japan and the United States are planning for the near future.