Iain 31st July

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IainMcNeil
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Iain 31st July

Post by IainMcNeil »

Now that the first piece of news is out you can see why things here have been so busy for the last few months. We've raised a significant amount of funding and are moving from developing and publishing games online to become a full PC & console publisher.

Publishers have a different role to developers. The developer designs and creates the game, while the publisher funds, markets and sells it. The publisher also localises, tests and create packaging. We're already used to doing many of these jobs ourselves on one project or another but from now on we'll be doing it on all projects. Packaging and layout is the main area we've got limited experience in but our new Marketing Manager, Marco Minoli, is very used to dealing with these types of issues so we're confident we have all the skills needed to make this a success.

The advantage of going in to publishing is that we move up the food chain and there are less people to split the revenue with. Obviously there are a lot more costs and risk as well but we haven't released a game yet that didn't make money for the publisher and we don't intend to start now! In a normal publishing deal the developer will get 20-30% of revenue, leaving the publisher with 70-80%. This means acting as a publisher we'll get 3-5 times as much revenue as a developer. Ths big risks as a publisher are funding the game development (which we've always done ourselves anyway) and paying to manufacture the games. If you are making console games you have to pay the cost of goods at the time of manufacture, which can be up to 3 months before release, which can easily be over €1m, so you can see why we need all that funding! As a publisher we're at risk if we can't sell these games as you don't get a refund from Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft!

We've got a very exciting release schedule lined up for 2009 but that will be announced in the coming weeks. We're preparing for Leipzig Game Convention, on the 19th-21st August, which is going to be a big show for us this year!
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