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GDC08: Why you should develop for the PSN

andrew yoon
East Coast Editor
Updated ·2 min read


We thought you'd enjoy seeing some of Sony's GDC presentation at Game Developer's Conference. SCEA reached out to the game development community, attempting to highlight the reasons why the PSN should be a destination for developers. The benefits of network distribution (slide, above) are pretty obvious:

  • No physical goods

  • Lower development costs

  • Keep more of the money!

  • No used games market

These are all intrinsic to digital distribution. But, Sony's presentation revealed some more interesting points.




Stats for the PLAYSTATION Store (PS3) include:

  • Over 2.8 million PSN registrants in North America

  • Average 100,000 registrants per week since Xmas

  • Over 46 million downloads worldwide

  • 50% of PS3 consoles registered on PSN (what about the other half?)



Sony doesn't hate 2D, a point they wanted to drive home. The PixelJunk series has shown Sony is willing to go into new (and old) territories with their PSN titles. The games delivered on PS3/PSP don't have to be exclusive to the platform "but" would earn some extra recognition from the SCE team. For independent developers, having the support of SCE for an exclusive can make a good game even better.



Some other points made in the presentation: unlike XBLA, there is no size limit to the games developed for PSN. However, if a gamer "can go to the store faster" than it would take to download the title, it probably isn't ideal for digital distribution. Also, in stark contrast to the suspiciously slow approval process at XBLA, Sony will allow games to be published as quickly as the Thursday after it completes QA approval. The bold challenge for developers to "show [SCE] how it's done!" encourages developers to make games, even if they compete against similar ones on the Network.

Perhaps the most telling thing about the presentation: how jam-packed it was. Developers are keen on the PSN, and are interested in publishing games for the PS3. It will take some time to see if Sony's efforts to catch their attention have worked. As a non-developer, it was a pretty fascinating session to attend.