Sony Pub Fund

[SaintAvi]

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, 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."

Not bad, right?

Courtesy of psxextreme.com

[EIN]

Sounds too good to be true... there's got to be some sort of upper limit Sony is willing to go with for this fund, because I can already see a couple of teams going overboard with it. This may bring business Sony's way, but how likely is someone going to devote their time to PSN, which has had problems in the past, when XBLA is an established, reliable and mainstream market?

What Sony needs for this to really get going is an indie dev team coming up with an amazing blockbuster, and actually sticking out with Sony when Microsofy comes with bigger and better offers. And how likely is that to happen?

[tonzie]

I think we should just give the PSN more time. XBLA has had a while to establish itself, therefore coming out with some pretty awesome games. The PSN has had some pretty good releases as well, but given time I'm sure they will come out with some realy heavy hitters.

That, and they need to release their goddamn PSN Cards in Canada hahahaha.

[SaintAvi]

Xbox live may be more well established but I doubt they guarantee their dev's a 100% recoup on development costs.

I also find it hard to believe anyone will go overboard with it since big guys like capcom
have capped prices at $15 a pop. Making the cost payoff ratio a bit riskier for smaller devs.

Also do not forget sony has about 20million registered psn users to XBL's 17 million

[tonzie]

Yeah I guess so. I think this is a good move on Sony's part for sure though, it might convince a lot of devs to even switch over (if they haven't been paid off by M$)

It still makes me angry how much Microsoft cares about the money, and only the money.

[SaintAvi]

that response was aimed at Ein really when he asked how likely is it for someone to devote their time to a psn title

[EIN]

Xbox live may be more well established but I doubt they guarantee their dev's a 100% recoup on development costs.

I also find it hard to believe anyone will go overboard with it since big guys like capcom
have capped prices at $15 a pop. Making the cost payoff ratio a bit riskier for smaller devs.

Also do not forget sony has about 20million registered psn users to XBL's 17 million

I think we're on different wavelengths here. Correct me if I'm wrong.

You claim XBox may not guarantee their devs with 100% recoups on dev costs, whereas Sony will try and do so here. From what I understand reading the article on gamesindustry.biz (the actual source btw) Sony is not doing that either. They are promising royalties as payment of the pub fund. So no more PSN exclusivity = no more royalties. Therefore, the devs don't get the money until AFTER they've made the game ==> AFTER DEVELOPMENT. After the game is ALREADY OUT.

The pub fund won't go directly towards making a better game overall, its just an incentive for them to go PSN. And while you may argue that that is more incentive for indie devs to spend more budgetwise on their games (because their "guaranteed royalties" will help out with costs), it can also be argued that the money will never go forward to helping the actual development of the games themselves. And should there ever be any disagreements between the dev and Sony, they could always just pull the plug on the royalty payments, leaving the devs in a financial lurch.

Furthermore, what's to stop certain developpers from claiming exorbant, false development costs, and screwing Sony over? If they know they've made a great game, why put up the real figures? Why not ratchet up the costs, then submit it? They'd get alot more money down the line, and who's to know better? Sony would have to pay a whole batch of accountants to go over all the files and transactions, wasting time and professional relationships, not to mention gathering a PR nightmare. In fact, if the developpers were that money concsious in the first place, why wait on the possibility of royalties, the vague PROMISE of money on a dictated timescale by a faceless corporation, when they can just SELL it to Microsoft for immediate, liquid funds?

And even with that statistic about PSN clients outnumbering XBL clients, that means absolutely nothing. Anyone who logged on, even once, is counted as a client. How many of those people actually engage in TRANSACTIONS online? A better statistic would have been the actual amount of money that goes through PSN and XBL. That is where you'd find that XBLA is signinficantly ahead of PSN, despite their deficit in "numbered clients".

btw I have no idea what you're referring to about the Capcom and the 15$ cap. Would you mind explaining?

And tonzie? Its always about the money. Always. It's an industry, it's the way the world works

[SaintAvi]

Well Ein, you can not recoup loss's for something before those loss's have been made, so it is only logical for the reimbursement to occur after the game has been released.

Pulling the plug on a developer remains to be seen as the fine print of the pub fund has not been released to the public, I however would believe that would place them in all sorts of legal woes had the developer fulfilled their part of the agreement.

As for claiming the exorbitant fee's, we have to remember that the games industry must maintain a level of professionalism in order for the developer to make any headway. A developer padding their budget with falsities is bound to sink them before they ever swim, killing any real shots of recognition and reputation, not to mention making them taboo if they ever have a project to shop around to a publisher.

"We're looking for a number of great games, and in return for exclusivity we'll match your development budget with guaranteed royalties" , Right now you are really just scrutinizing the linguistics of the quote, I read this as , Hey come develop for us, keep the game on the PSN and you will match your budget and you are guaranteed royalties on top of that. Just paying royalties like you have suggested, would make the PUB fund no different than the current model they already have.

As for game quality, I believe that the exclusives on PSN have been better than the shovelware that is produced on the XBLA. If Q-Games for example, the developers of the PSN exclusive pixeljunk games automatically recoup their loss's after release in addition to the royalties it would have gotten anyway, I can only see the increase in title quality come naturally. This same sentiment can extend just the same to developers like "thatgamecompany" who are behind flow and flower.

As for the capcom remark, you had mentioned teams going overboard with their development, when I mentioned capcom locking some top tier titles like streetfighterHD at $15, I was saying that the development cost to retail turnaround has to maintain some sort of equilibrium, monstrous budget titles just arent cut out to be on PSN or XBLA in the first place and are much more suited to the traditional route.

Getting back to your original post "What Sony needs for this to really get going is an indie dev team coming up with an amazing blockbuster, and actually sticking out with Sony when Microsofy comes with bigger and better offers. And how likely is that to happen?"

I find it hard to paint the PUB fund as anything but a WIN for developers, which in turn will foster better relationships, which happen to also be lucrative for the quality titles, which in turn pushes out even better titles which yield great returns, which then has the cycle repeat itself with the titles just getting better and better, which at the end of the day is a WIN for everyone.

[EIN]

People may be honest and good at heart, but that doesnt mean someone wont try and exploit the system to ruin it for everyone else; nor does it mean shell gaming companies wont be created out of the blue with that specific goal in mind. And say what you want about shovelware, its a definite, undeniable cash cow.

You make some very valid points SaintAvi, but both you and I are both reduced to mere speculation and hyperbole at this point. Until we see real numbers churned out (and results), we can't really say either way which one of us is closer to the truth.

Unfortunately since we seem to find ourselves on different sides, and only time will tell

[tonzie]

And tonzie? Its always about the money. Always. It's an industry, it's the way the world works

Oh I know that, that's a given hahaha. I just meant the way a company goes about it. Microsoft just flaunts their money, at least Sony pretends to be your friend. ;)

It's like highschool drama or something hahaha.