[chii]

why is it only when an engine support console do it mean "serious" competition?

An indie game dev may make their game for non-console platforms, and if that game proves to be a hit, a separate development effort could be made to target a console. Or a re-implementation. If console is the first, or only choice, i would argue that the team is not really indie (by which i mean self-funded and small).

And who knows - may be godot's popularity would change the way consoles engineer their legal contracts and not hide behind NDAs and secrecy to become more open.

[eropple]

> a separate development effort could be made to target a console. Or a re-implementation

"Could." Sure. Or they "could" use an engine that doesn't require reimplementation to target Where The Market Is.

Which is why, even though people really don't like it much, Unity gets used.

> If console is the first, or only choice, i would argue that the team is not really indie (by which i mean self-funded and small).

This has not been a reasonable statement for at least five years. Indie games don't have lead platforms, but they do, as a matter of practice, need to be on all relevant platforms to have a chance of financial viability. (A grand strategy game might not need to deploy to consoles. Most other stuff really, really does.)

> And who knows - may be godot's popularity would change the way consoles engineer their legal contracts and not hide behind NDAs and secrecy to become more open.

Platform holders do not care about your engine and no indie developers, even en masse, have enough weight to make swing them. EA and Activision might not, at least not in a way that wasn't a special exception just for them, and they move a lot of product by themselves.

[TulliusCicero]

This is ahistorical.

Some of the first well known "indie" games were on Xbox live arcade on the 360, like Braid, Super Meat Boy, and Castle Crashers.

[chii]

super meat boy was first released as a flash game on new grounds. The success there lead to the future release on console and PC (and i recall seeing it was rewritten for these platforms, rather than porting the flash version, but now i can't find a reference).

And while braid is indeed released first on console, there's at least one citation of Blow decrying the process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braid_(video_game)#cite_ref-xb... . Blow likely had no choice at the time because steam (in 2007) wasn't as big a platform as it is today.

I am still of the opinion that console-only releases are not good for indie developers, despite the apparent contradiction of it being more profitable. And the reason Braid had xbox live arcade release is more to do with the industry connection Blow has, rather than the merits of the platform. Even Blow himself initially thought he'd be making a PC release for this game (until the financial side-benefits of xbox arcade back then kicked in).