Indie Publisher Suggests Small Indie Games Might Be Struggling On PS4 Right Now

Nowhere Prophet recently released on Switch, PS4, and Xbox One, following the deck-building its 2019 release on PC, and it marks the first time that publisher No More Robots has released a game for Sony's system. The publisher also has Descenders coming to PS4 on August 25--but if sales of their first release are an indicator of what to expect, the publisher might withdraw from releasing on Sony systems completely.

Kotaku Australia picked up on tweets from Mike Rose, the owner of No More Robots, indicating that sales for Nowhere Prophet on PS4 have been terrible. Although he does not provide specific figures, sales were much, much higher on Switch than PS4--20 times higher, in fact.

In another tweet, Rose said that the Xbox One and Switch ports made enough money to cover the cost of porting within hours of release, but the PS4 version has struggled so much that Rose can't see the publisher releasing more games on the system in the future.

While the game carried a launch discount on Switch and Xbox One, Sony was reportedly "too busy" to allow this for Nowhere Prophet.

Nowhere Prophet is, like Descenders before it, available on Game Pass. Rose has previously said that this actually leads to much higher sales, rather than preventing them. This can even carry over onto other consoles--sales of Death Squared saw a bump on Switch after the game launched on Game Pass.

It's well-known that indie games tend to sell better on Switch--Shovel Knight was released across nine systems, yet 25% of sales were on Switch, for instance. Meanwhile, AAA titles continue to sell well on Sony's system--Ghost of Tsushima just broke records for a new IP.