Did you know it costs a lot of money to get your game rated by the ESRB? I didn't, and it seems that PSP Minis developers didn't know it either. Unlike iPhone Apps, PSP Minis need to receive ESRB approval before they can be sold, and it seems that those making the small-size games weren't prepared for the hit.
"[PSP development is] definitely more serious business and not for casual non-developers," explains Sergei Gourski, developer of App Store/PSP Minis game Fieldrunners. Before a game can be made for the PSP's download service, Gourski says that would-be creators need to have money saved up for both a dev kit and the ESRB vampires.
"The costs of ratings such us ESRB is significantly more then we had realized."
This goes some way to explaining the ludicrous price hike on the PSP Minis service, with Fieldrunners costing $2.99 at the App Store and $6.99 on the PlayStation Network. It's all very well for Sony to say that developers need to price their games competitively, but it seems like a financial impossibility if they're being gouged by the ESRB and need to buy extra hardware.
Something tells me that Minis is doomed to fail. Yet another great idea, thoroughly Sonied.
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
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5:00 PM on 10.10.2009
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i.e "what you painted the destuctoid spaceship pink? I think you just sonied!!!"
Seems somewhat bullshit that they're FORCED to put it through the ESRB, if it costs that much money.
How is Sony responsible for the ESRB, Jim?
And does anyone know how much a ESRDB rating is? Just curiuos.
$2,500 seems to be the going rate.
You're assuming a certain amount of journalistic integrity from Sterling. Not gonna happen.
The ESRB controls a considerable amount of what goes on in the games industry content wise. What would be possible is allow developers to circumvent the ESRB by not requiring ratings for the minis. (Similar to the way XBL doesn't require an ESRB rating for Community Games.
There is a couple of problems with that scenario. By requiring an ESRB rating Sony limits the risk of titles getting on the services with REALLY inappropriate content. Sony really doesn't need the bad press involving a game similar to RapeLay getting on their service. Without a first party certification process Sony itself would have to be monitoring games for content or simply wait for complaints before taking it down.
This is a problem the industry as a whole faces when relying on the ESRB. Personally I think the ESRB should be abolished and an industry wide set of rating standards (along with logos under the creative commons license) should be adopted. It's not like the ESRB is particularly consistent with their own ratings and the cost of getting a game rated (and thus getting it into stores) is often prohibitive for a small developer. And frankly why should any developer have to pay the ESRB money to have their game rated?
(Speaking of course from a hypothetical standpoint as developers are trapped thanks to political scapegoating and the stores that refuse to sell unrated games.)
They should have done it similarly to the Indie games on Xbox Live which are rated entirely by the dev community.
Damn. I feel bad for them if it is that much. I mean, it will be payed off over time, but that's kind of high, especially for something that hasn't been tried yet.
It seems PSP minis are doing something quite different to the app-store. Not just in a bad way. Yes some equivalent Minis products will be more expensive than their iPhone counterparts but we're likely to get some wholly different products as well. Fieldrunners was $5 at launch, altered to $2.99 after great sales and being on the store for a while. A lot of people know Apple's store is splitting at the seems and developers can lose a lot of money in other ways with Apple (ie waiting six weeks to be approved by their QA process, only to be denied twice and have to go to the back of the line a la minigore).
While the comparison to the appstore is inevitable this is about offering diversity to PSP gamers, an added incentive to buy the handheld on top of it's library.
I don't think Sony wants the signal-to-noise ratio of the appstore, and yes they've raised the barrier to entry so they won't get it even if they did want it. But this does work naturally to cull the tosh which inhabits 95% of the app store.
Or they could even use a simple, custom rating system like that employed by Apple's App Store.
As for the price of ESRB approval, they appear to run $2,500, which presumably is the cost per game.
Is it something sony is requiring the ratings?
They're not. What they ARE responsible for, however, is making a service that's worth investing in. Not a single Sony studio is making a PSP Minis game. Instead, they basically said "You can put games here" and left developers to the mercy of PSP game making, allowing them to face ratings and dev kit purchases on their own.
Point is, Sony didn't follow through. It never follows through with anything PSP-related. You don't put up a half-assed service, expect developers to touch it out in their own with no incentive, and then expect the PSP to be more worthwhile than its rivals.
So you claim Jim doesn't have JOURNALISM because he says this is Sony's responsibility, but then you agree with his claim that Sony is causing a problem by requiring indie games to get ESRB approval, even when Microsoft has already worked the issue out in a much better way a long time ago.
So...why for does Jim lack the JOURNALISM?
xD
Don't tell me you really believe that can happen.
them?
They aren't, but they are responsible for the guideline that dictates PSP Minis need to be rated by the ESRB. You don't need a game to be rated by the ESRB (technically) and you really shouldn't need it if it's for a mini game service. Look at the iPhone. They just use Apple's rating service. Why can't Sony use their own rating service?
I hope minis succeed, I've had more fun with Tetris, Vempire, and Pinball Fantasies than I have with any other "full" games as of late. We need more, addictive games like that.