Introversion co-founder Mark Morris has condemned the way console manufacturers treat indie developers.

Morris cited high barriers of entry and the escalating demands of Sony and Microsoft as good reasons to ignore consoles altogether.

He called the £10,000 (AU$15,514) fee for an Xbox development kit “ridiculous”, but that was not the only cost for the studio.

“You've got to pay - I think our quality assurance bill was US$30,000 for testing with Darwinia+, and it took four years to get the game certified to a standard that Microsoft wanted.”

“It then sold rubbish. We hardly shipped any units on Xbox 360 compared to PC," he told VG24/7.

"You're not delivering the amount of sales, you're making us work harder, and ultimately we're getting paid less than what we do on PC.

"So I think they're definitely - in the indie world - second-class customers."

As a result of its Darwinia+ experience, Introversion would not publish Prison Architect on Xbox Live Arcade or the PlayStation Store.

"We've got no interest in working with any of the big console owners now with Prison Architect,” said Morris.

“The only thing we might do, once the game's out there, is license it to another developer to do the port on our behalf."

"But Microsoft and Sony come along and they say, 'well we don't want to have your game second, we want to be first.' Well, they can't be first. We're on PC because they've made it too hard.

“Also, they want exclusive content, well piss off."

The focus on PC has paid off for the small studio, with a Prison Architect alpha raising US$361,780 (AU$350,149) in four weeks thanks to a Kickstarter-like campaign on Introversion’s website.

“We think the model we’ve used – a Paid Alpha crossed with Kickstarter style tiers is an excellent model for Indie Games right now, and these figures back that up,” wrote lead designer Chris Delay on the Introversion forums.

“At 10,000 sales and over US$360,000 in revenue in just four weeks, it’s fair to say these sales are way beyond our expectations.”