GDC09: Sony encourages PSN exclusivity with Pub Fund

Sounds good. :)

Developers win, and so does Sony. Great deal I think.

Sounds like a good system. It'll help start-ups get there first game going.

Whatever helps get more games is fine by me!

maybe you should ask BOb, the creator of bob's game to make a game for you

This is a really smart way to combat the popularity of Xbox Live Arcadeand the exclusive games it has been getting lately.

I wonder how Microsoft and Nintendo will respond.

maybe psn will start getting more exclusive dlc now

I can't decide if I want this Zombie game. I wish there was a demo. It looks like fun, but I don't feel like taking the plunge. I guess I'll wait a day or two for reviews to go up.

great, more of this exclusive crap. we have got to get over this phase now.

damn, sony might actually lose money in the end, but this sounds like a great way to beef PSN.

How about doing a Global Fund and regaining some of those lost PS3 excloosives eh, Sony?

it's awesome that a guy named eden would be the one speaking about it.

this is a good idea for sony.
they should have used this model before.

i just dont think exclusive arcade style games will be enough to sell consoles or gain market share.
Braid was supposedly a great game, sold very well, but did not sell any 360 consoles for microsoft last year IMO.

i hope sony has looked at the full accounting picture of how many $ 10 PSN titles they have to sell to make a profit from them. i hope sony does not think exclusive PSN arcade games will sell Millions of consoles.

if used right this is a great idea, but could also lead to more problems and loses if not accounting for correctly.

not many PSN or XBLA games have sold more than 1 million copies, and how much money is sony going to throw at you to make a game for them??

IMO throwing $ 50 million for GTA, or securing tekken 6, or new square enix ps3 RPG projects, or create a square enix PSN store like capcom, and etc would be a better way to spend extra sony cash.

My, how things have changed at Sony. I'm so glad they ate a little humble pie, and are finally over themselves enough to do this. That false pride thing was really turning me off on the ps3.


"We have a very different approach to exclusives than some of our competitors. We don't buy exclusivity. We don't fund development. We don't, for the lack of a better term, bribe somebody to only do a game on our platform,"
- Jack Tretton

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/07/03/sonys-jack-tretton-we-dont-buy-exclusivity/

I'd be more inclined. If they match my development costs, even if the title doesn't do overly well, I'd still have some return. But I'm sure they'd choose very selectively. Like I doubt they'd pay for "you have to burn the rope" or some other crap.

Microsoft is evil for buying exclusivity, but apparently this is an ok thing for Sony to do.


But seriously, smart move. If you want exclusives from third parties these days, ya gotta pay for em like MS does.

This sounds good. It's good to hear that Sony is really getting serious.The developers get their incentive money, we get our exclusive games and Sony's machine gets to look even more attractive to potential buyers. Everybody wins. Wheeeee!!!!!!!!

Fine print?

Gee, I don't know. How about the game is exclusive to the PS3.

Wait, why are they making a game about undead buttocks?

Oh, that's "burn" not "bum"... Man, it's so hard to tell between an "r" and an "n" next to each other and an "m."

This might cause a little ripple, but don't expect a deluge of new DLC games coming to PSN exclusively, companies have made it clear on why they aren't releasing on PSN, and its not about cost of development of the games.

Sony lost many exclusives for the PS3 because of costs just for the development of the game exclusively for the PS, the costs forced companies like Rock Star and Square Enix to release on multiple consuls because the costs involved in making a full blown distribution game for the PS3 sky rocketed from the PS2 costs, and far fewer consumers buying the games, and even the money offered up by Sony for exclusivity doesn't counter act the losses that would be taken for releasing this way. These companies started releasing major titles on Xbox 360 and Wii just to try to turn a profit on the games, and getting bigger negotiated profits from the software to boot, something Sony was very staunch on in previous years.

The PSN comes along... AND ITS FREE... to the consumers, everything downloaded on PSN for free is financed by the game distributors and all downloads, free or otherwise, cost the distributors money because Sony charges them bandwidth fees and not the users, something Xbox Live and Wii doesn't do because they either have a charge program to finance the network, Xbox Live Gold, or almost no free DLC, Wii App Store. Now Sony is going, "We'll pay for half your development costs if you distribute exclusively on our network." Not one thing says anything about getting rid of charges on free content though, and one of the major advantages Xbox Live has is the fact that all this DLC it has often comes in the form of Free Demo's, people are more likely to buy if they've played the game, but a free demo definitely will require a lot of buyer's if you have to pay every time somebody downloads it, and seeing that its less than 10% that actually buy after playing the demo it leaves companies very skittish about financing the PSNetwork just so the consumers don't have to.

Welcome to the real world Sony, you can no longer be the only company profiting off your equipment, which you aren't even doing that I might point out.

Wonder if this will force MS to make their system a little more developer-friendly. I remember a few months Back MS cut back the percentage that the devs make on XBLA games, and that was very unfortunate. Hopefully this will change their mind if they start losing quality games.

Now with this added assistance, let's hope developers can start releasing demos for these games.

As fun as Burn Zombie Burn sounds, I'm just not willing to slap down 10 bucks for it with out trying it. Same applied to Flower.

My loss? Maybe, but it's also the developers loss too...

With a new IP and the PSN charging for transfers (discounted rate for exclusive titles I believe, but still a charge), I wonder if it's a money related issue that no demo was released.

The small number of reviews I have read stated it was repetitive and there is only offline co-op play. Those two issues have me holding out for now and sticking with Kill Monty.