I was at IndieCade Europe for the second day.
There was a nice talk by Audrey Leprince (
Furi) about the choices made by the studio after each of their previous releases. Each of the game the studio has made so far has received positive reviews and praises, but managed just enough to break even. It turns out they fled from mobile because they did not want to (and could not) do freemium, which is the most successful business model on mobile these days. With Furi, they accepted to be featured by Sony on PS+, so that the game would be free for a month for PS4 owners at the same time of the release. It is a bold compromise (great visibility but no revenue) which might have hindered the sales on PS4 and PC. They will release the game on Xbox One in 15 days, and they will discount the game on Steam (as expected). She talked about 30,000 units sold on Steam so far. She also talked briefly about the next game, which should be i) a love story, ii) with the end of the story shown as soon as the game starts.
There was also an amazing talk by Michel Ancel (Rayman, Beyond Good & Evil, UbiArt), who is incredibly sympathetic and humble. What I did not know about Beyond Good & Evil 2 is that he deliberately put the project on hold because the consoles in 2008 were not powerful enough for his ambitions for the game. Crossing my finders to see the project go live with our current hardware, or maybe the next-gen of consoles.
I have also been able to try the Oculus on two games: 1) flying as a bird in a Minecraft-like environement, with
Fugl, which gives good sensations of speed, and 2) "escaping a room" in
I Expect You To Die, which was all the more impressive that there were some hardware for the hands which could recognize the movements of the hands in space, movements of the thumb, index finger, and other fingers as a group. Given that the game also recognizes the position and orientation of the body in the room, it felt really magical.
Edit: I forgot to mention: Psychonauts VR is amazing. I could not try it but watched the demo by Anna Kipnis (DoubleFine) and wow.