Same thing for GTA4 and Fallout 3 DLC and yet those were considered the most complete waste of moneyhats ever. MS and Rockstar/Bethesda agreed on a split of development financing in terms of an upfront loan and royalty sharing.

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.

Im pretty sure the Pub Fund covers Bandwith costs as well(which wont cost Sony a thing then what they were doing before, it is mainly for MP developers). That can be grouped with Development costs.

Even if it didn't

1gig DLable game=5-10 dollars

1gig=1 dollar(geustimating not literal)

if your game sells a million, you owe a million......but you made 5-10million

this can cover that with no problem, not forgeting the fact that you dont have any dev fees and can completely doit the same way again. Very good investment.

The fund is for "development costs" only.  Not bandwidth costs.  I'm not saying that they won't make profits, I'm saying the so called incentive on Sony's part will evaporate after so many downloads.  This will basically have meant that you could have gotten the same if not better profits going XBLA, especially since you could then offer a demo at no extra charge.

Basically this investment isn't really much of an incentive unless your game is expected to not sell in the hundreds of thousands figures.  If you have a $5000 developed game that is only 256mb size and you get 10,000 downloads, sure it is a great incentive and deal!

it is impossible for this not to be a great deal

firstly what I was implying in the other post was that BW fees could possibly be grouped with Development costs, I mean it is kind of necessary to get the game on the market. Unless you have proof of this not being true, it is very well a possibility.

Second, Live Arcade doesn't offer 0 develoment fees while retaining your independence. Regardless of what the BW fees are, as long as your game costs more then the fee, you make a profit that doesn't need to be divided amongst dev costs.

@nightsurge
As long as the bandwidth fee are less than your royalties off each downloaded copy, you're still making money.

Guys, like I have said, I am not saying they aren't making some coin! I am merely saying, that on the high chance that BW fees are NOT reimbursed in the Pub Fund, the incentive of "paying for your development costs" will be null and void because the BW fees will slowly add up as I showed in my early calculations.

Microsoft does not charge bandwidth fees, only royalties. Also, last I knew, Microsoft does not claim ownership of games placed on it's service. They stay the property of the developer unless Microsoft offers to outright buy them. I could be wrong, but this is the impression I always seemed to get.

If BW fees are paid for in the Pub Fund, then by golly this is an absolutely perfect way to go, but I kinda doubt that is the case.

@nightsurge
They are specifying that the IP is still yours because they're asking for exclusivity on PSN. So they're saying: we're paying you for the publishing exclusivity, not buying your IP.

And for small projects the development costs might not be much when compared with the total royalty revenue if the game sells well, but having a guaranteed amount to cover development makes it less risky for the author.

Note that by what I understand it's only a guaranteed royalty income, not a money-in-your hand gift... once a successful game covers its development costs with profit for the author then the deal is irrelevant. It's basically so that authors are not scared by the risks of development+bandwidth.

MS may not charge for bandwith but royalties are all but doubled for developers who do not wish to be exclusive. MS requires timed exclusivity for some as well.

and Hypothetically, $1.00 for every $5-10.00 you make is not nearly as bad as royalties/dev fees which would be 7/10ths of all profits.

Thats why l love Sony