nightsurge said:
Skeeuk said:
GDC 09: Sony Offers Huge Incentive For PSN Exclusivity
http://www.psxextreme.com/
Remember that biased and irrational media blowup concerning the PSN bandwidth fee? Yeah, well, who thinks publishers won't want to put their games on the PSN now?
As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, 1. Sony will match the development budget of a self-published video game if that title remains exclusive to the PlayStation Network. The first game to take advantage of the deal is the recently released Burn Zombie Burn!, and Sony says they're "looking for a great many more titles," so pay attention, self-publishers! Chris Eden, Sony development relations manager, says they're ready to put their money where their mouth is:
"It's all very well for us as platform holders to say 'put all your money into PlayStation Network, it's a fantastic idea', but are we prepared to put or money where our mouth is? The answer is yes. We're looking for a number of great games, and in return for exclusivity we'll match your development budget with guaranteed royalties."
This deal is called the "Pub Fund" and just to be clear, Sony is not purchasing exclusive rights for the games in question (a practice Microsoft doesn't seem to shy away from); IP rights and full control will remain in the hands of the development teams. This deal merely says, if you keep your game exclusive to the PSN - and therefore sacrifice any potential sales on the XBLA - we will match your development budget. Added Eden:
"A really important thing to point out is that this is not first-party publishing, this is not Sony buying your product. You'll be the publisher, you'll own the IP and you'll control your product. This is assisting you to make your next step from developer to publisher."
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A few things jump out at me right away.
1. This just pays off the development budget. They will still be charged the PSN bandwidth fee, so depending on if they release a demo as well, they would likely make more profit heading the XBLA route.
2. This says it is just for "self published" titles. Does this mean individuals that do their own games, or does this include small gaming companies as well as large publishers? I have a feeling the budget on a large publisher game could be rather high and not what Sony would be willing to pay, so as it stands this seems to only help independent developers.
As such, all big publishers will still likely be hit with PSN bandwidth fees and no reimbursed development costs. So while this may bring in a few indie games depending on the budget, file size, inclusion of a demo, etc, I don't see this as a very big incentive.
For example:
-Say as an Indie developer you have a game that cost $50,000 to create (probably very high budget for most indie games).
-Sony pays you that mulah so you are back to breaking even.
-Say your game is roughly 512mb file size = $0.08 per download owed to Sony.
-If you have a popular game that sees more than a million downloads LTD, you'll be facing costs of $80,000 right there.
-This doesn't even consider if your development costs were lower and file size was higher. Imagine making a game on a $10,000 budget that happened to be 700mb file size. That's $0.112 per download, and after just 100,000 downloads you are already sitting at an $11,200 bill from Sony.
-These calculations are without a demo. Including a demo would obviously cost even more.
So basically this may help developers cut initial costs, but if their game is popular at all, the benefit will be erased and they could see higher costs because of it.
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