Sony has opened their system to indie developers as we have heard from GDC. They created the pub fund to fund development of games on their system from indie developers and now they have waived the update fees they use to charge. These are all great changes and they were necessary in order to not only compete with MS but with other open systems that are coming to the market like the Ouya.
I do have to say that its funny that Sony finally gets it about Indie developers while MS has been doing this for years but Sony is getting praise as if this is a new concept. The only thing I will say is that MS does not promote indie games like they do their XBLA games which is a small slight because they could be using that area for their next XBLA game to bring forward.
MS is rumored to be doing the same thing and also there is the rumor that the Windows Store will be coming to the nextBox thus opening the console up to just about anybody with a one time 60 dollar fee and no fee for updates. If the Windows store does come to the Nextbox and MS allows any developer to put their games on the console then this would be the most friendly development system out there. The WIndows store will give developers at least 3 target systems to put games and apps on MS devices.
While Sony move is good, MS has the ability to blow the doors off of console and game development if they tie their Store to all of their devices and bring down the barriers for all game development.
There is a chance for a lot of crap to come out of the store but if MS get their rating system and other ways to promote the wheat from the chaff this can reduce the amount of garbage that rise to the top.
