pezus said:
They made that deal with Sony before it even came out. Why would they suddenly be disappointed now once it's proven that deal was a good one? |
Define "good one"?
From my understanding, most bundled software produces far less per-unit revenue for third party publishers than a retail sale and they enter into these contracts because the high volume more than makes up for the reduced revenue. I don't know the figures from this contract but I wouldn't be surprised if Ubisoft was earning $5 or $10 per unit rather than the $20+ they probably get at retail.
In other words, while a game like Assassin's Creed may break even on development costs with 250,000 to 500,000 games sold digitally (where they cut out the retailer) or with 500,000 to 1,000,000 sales at retail, they probably require far more sales to break even on bundled software.
Beyond that, they won't be able to bundle all of the software they produce and the more software that is bundled the lower of sales they can expect from bundled software.
The core problem for publishers with the PS-Vita still stands, it is selling at a rate below 5 million units per year which means it doesn't have the userbase to support the budgets of PS-Vita games. It needs to maintain roughly double its sales to become a viable platform for strong support.
