Samustai on porting, optimization and marketing: “In the release month, Titan Chaser earned €20 thousand on consoles”

About the studio and the range of services provided

• Samustai was founded in 2019. Initially, the company wanted to become a publisher and help indie developers enter the console market.
• According to Vinogradov, it is “relatively easy” to get the devkits of the necessary consoles. But getting developer accounts is quite problematic. On PlayStation, for example, this process can take seven to eight months.
• For an indie developer to understand the intricacies of working with each platform is simply unprofitable in terms of time and effort invested. Communication with Xbox, for example, occurs only by mail. With PlayStation, communication takes place exclusively through ticket systems and internal forums. And Nintendo practically does not give feedback — all interaction takes place through the interfaces available on the platform.
• For these reasons, Samustai decided to take over the communication process and help developers facilitate the process of getting to the console. It took the team about a year to build relationships with all platforms.
• At the same time, Samustai does not position itself exclusively as a publisher. The studio also helps with the code when porting titles to different platforms and cooperates with other publishers who do not have enough resources to develop ports.
• A total of 15 people are currently working in the studio: separate Unity and Unreal Engine teams, as well as one team responsible for testing.

About the subtleties of porting

• Despite the fact that modern engines allow you to make builds for different platforms, it is impossible to create a full-fledged port in this way. In Samustai, such a solution is called a “cold build” — this is only the initial stage of porting.
• The build process of such a build is quite fast — from a week to three, depending on the number of plugins used in the game. At the same time, developers may need a special version of a specific plug-in for consoles.
• It is important to understand that a cold build is not the final product. He simply will not be able to pass certification on platforms. The porting process itself usually takes from two months (this is the minimum) and contains a lot of pitfalls.
• One of the main problems is the lack of universal solutions. The engines may have tools that allow you to automatically change the “inputs” for different platforms. However, all the work always has to be done by hand.
• Developers often need to adjust the level of the closer when using the analog stick of the gamepad as a mouse cursor. This is most often necessary for strategies and taikuns, but it is also found in games of other genres.

The scrolling speed should vary depending on which interface element in the game the player is currently on. A great example is Diablo II: Resurrected. When you are on empty cells in the inventory, the analog stick moves quickly. At the same time, when you switch to any item, the scroll slows down so that you can't jump over the desired item quickly. No plugin can do such things, you need to write it all manually.

Anton Vinogradov

co-founder of Samustai

About tool differences and porting to different platforms

• According to Vinogradov, the most universal solution today is Unity. Using this engine, it is easier to unify the whole process. If a developer encounters a certain problem, the next time he will most likely know its solution.
• In the case of Unreal, each project is “a unique case written by the developer in his own personal style.” Also, games made on this engine are more difficult to port and optimize for Switch.
• Despite the differences in engines and available tools, the final result depends on the specific project and team. Unity has greatly lowered the entry threshold for indie developers who do not have much experience in the industry. Because of this, more projects appeared on the market that were not made perfectly in terms of technical quality.
• Now Samustai is ready to port games of any genre and almost any level. The only thing is that the studio is unlikely to take on a project made on Cocos or GameMaker. Niche titles rarely take off on consoles, and it is not very advisable to allocate resources for this and make a port to zero or minus.
• If we talk about porting to different platforms, now the process has become more unified due to a similar architecture. Since the SDKs for consoles are very similar, it’s easiest to port the game to all devices at the same time.
• However, the most difficult thing is to transfer games to the Nintendo Switch. It’s not just the weak hardware, but also the most difficult certification process among all platforms. The team responsible for this carefully examines the project and finds the largest number of bugs.

co-founder of Samustai

About optimization and problems of GTA remasters

• Vinogradov notes that with the release of the current generation of consoles, the process of porting and development has not changed in any way. You can make separate versions for old and new consoles, but even Microsoft and Sony themselves recommend making a build that works immediately on PS4 and PS5, or Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.
• The process of optimizing games depends both on the list of necessary platforms, and on the level of the project itself and the team that is responsible for it.
• Many developers, when planning a console release, immediately target the Nintendo Switch. Therefore, globally optimization problems can only begin in the case of porting larger projects. However, due to the higher level of development, such games often have a good situation with the code.

An AA level project with poor optimization may exist. Out of ten projects, only one or two will have poor optimization, and this is not a global problem. With poor optimization, there may be 20 projects out of 20 made initially for Steam and potentially wanting to go to the Nintendo Switch. But they are initially made so that even with poor optimization, it will not be difficult to drag such a game onto the platform.

Anton Vinogradov

co-founder of Samustai

• Vinogradov also commented on the technically problematic release of remasters of the GTA trilogy. In his opinion, when switching to Unreal, the team did not fully calculate all the risks, and the hasty release was associated with management problems rather than the development itself.
• “We will be able to play GTA in the format in which it was supposed to be released, in March-April. And this will be the project that was supposed to come out then, in the format in which it was conceived,” Vinogradov said.
• At the same time, he understands why the team took the iOS version of the games as a basis. The thing is that at that time it was the best in terms of optimization and certification, which has already passed several iterations.

What PC developers should keep in mind to make porting easier

• All PC developers who are considering entering the console market in the future need to think about management. It is better to think in advance how the game will be controlled from the gamepad.
• On the one hand, now most releases on Steam support controllers of the same Xbox. On the other hand, there are a number of developers who make such complex concepts for their projects that game design for consoles has to be invented almost from scratch.
• If a developer is making a typhoon, strategy, or RPG, it’s always better to think in advance about how it will be controlled on the gamepad.

co-founder of Samustai

About business processes and revenue distribution

• After the outbreak of the pandemic, the number of projects for porting from Samustai remained at about the same level. However, the process of releasing new releases has slowed down for major indie publishers like Daedalic Entertainment and Devolver Digital, as well as for companies of a higher category.
• In 2021, the number of new major games has also decreased. Restructuring in many studios and difficulties in switching to remote work have postponed the release of almost every big project.
• Major gaming companies and notable indie publishers have their own internal porting teams. However, they are often not enough to work with the entire pipeline of projects. That’s why they turn to Samustai and other similar studios.
• When working with publishers, the work is carried out at a fixed rate. Samustai delivers a build ready for release and receives a pre-agreed amount for it.
• In the case of indie developers, it’s easiest to work for a percentage of revenue — most often 50/50. In this case, the cost of porting is beaten off in three to four months. However, it also depends on recovery — putting the cost of porting into the money that Samustai will receive from the platform.
• Revenue split 50/50 is the average market rate. At the same time, some large publishers can not only take a larger percentage, but also take away IP rights from developers. According to Vinogradov, this approach harms the gaming industry.

• According to Vinogradov, modern indie developers have greatly improved their business approach and it will progress further. Many of them initially lay budgets, study the market, communicate with the press and are looking for a publisher. There was no such thing five years ago.
• The downside of this process is that creativity disappears a little from the industry. Some developers deliberately divide the project into several parts for economic reasons. Others just make games somehow, if only they could earn some money on the same Steam.

About marketing and promotion on consoles

• Today, well-structured marketing can provide good sales to the game. That is why large publishers often charge an increased percentage for their services, because they can properly build this process and allocate a budget for it.
• As Vinogradov notes, the video of one blogger with a million views can spur sales of PC games much better than high ratings in the press. This is also true for console titles, but there the main tool for interacting with the audience is banners in stores.

On Xbox and PlayStation you buy banners of your game. The same FIFA that hangs in the PS Store full screen every time it comes out. This is a paid story. The person inside the store will adjust the filters himself, he will find the game himself. It's cool to buy a banner and show him this game in person, but it's not Steam. He will not sit in the browser and search for something for a long time. If you didn't get a discount, technically you don't exist in the console store.

Anton Vinogradov

co-founder of Samustai

• If the title sold well on Steam, it is almost guaranteed to have no less sales on consoles.
• However, it is also important to remember about marketing. If the game blew up on the PC, but the console release was not normally reported to users and did not arouse their interest, there is a chance to fail.
• When promoting a game on consoles, it is important that the platforms themselves notice it. For example, Nintendo chooses the projects it likes and includes them in the mailing lists. For Sony, it is necessary to make a pitch — if the team likes the game, they will post about it on the website, post it in social networks and publish a trailer on YouTube. Xbox has about the same approach, but adjusted for the presence of a separate indie direction.

About sales

• At the end, Vinogradov also shared information about the sales of a small indie game Titan Chaser. The console release of the project, for which Samustai was responsible, took place in September.
• “In the release month, she immediately earned €20 thousand on consoles. We believe that this is a very good result for the release on all platforms,” Vinogradov said.
• Contrary to popular opinion, Nintendo Switch is far from the leading position in terms of revenue. According to Vinogradov, this is due to the growing competition on the platform due to the appearance of a large number of indie projects.
• If we talk specifically about the projects that Samustai ports, Switch accounts for about 20-30% of revenue, and Xbox and PlayStation account for 40-50% each.

You can maintain the tail of sales for six months for sure, and then we live on discounts. Discounts on consoles work even better than on Steam, because when you go to the sale, you don't see tens of thousands of titles, but 200-300. Thanks to price filters, it's easier for you to find content that interests you. Plus, there are a lot of parsers for consoles that notify users about discounts. Tens of thousands of people have subscribed to such sites, and they work quite well.

Anton Vinogradov

co-founder of Samustai