We spoke to you yesterday about testimony from a freelance developer / editor who is frustrated with the way Sony Interactive Entertainment maintains its professional relationships with smaller businesses. Apparently this testimony contributed to the division of many languages.
Also read: PS5: Sony talks about sales and wants to break a record of the first PlayStation
Kotaku, who made the testimony and revelations posted by Iain Garner on Twitter yesterday about the sums requested by Sony to promote a game on the PlayStation Store, has just handed over. In the past 24 hours, the American side has actually collected numerous testimonials from independent developers, mostly on condition of anonymity, at least annoyed with the way Sony has to treat them. Kotaku’s first statement immediately sets the tone:
There’s Nintendo to support you. There is also Microsoft to assist you. Then there is Sony who backs up their AAA machine and doesn’t care about the others.
According to another statement, this time from a publisher, Sony is aware of the problem:
Neither platform is “great”, but Sony’s one is particularly terrible. And they know, they have had a problem for a long time. They themselves say they have a problem but they never fixed anything so the problem persists.
In addition to the problem of the amount of costs related to the promotion on the PlayStation Store that we told you about yesterday, Developers mainly complain that their game is completely lost on PlayStation Store without paying Sony. Even if it is also possible to pay Microsoft and Nintendo for the promotion, developers and publishers also have free options to have their games promoted.
Not a week goes by when people tell us, “I saw your game on the Xbox dashboard today! The Xbox UI looks messy. But in reality it’s pretty interesting that there are so many places and rooms to display games.
Almost no sale
A consequence of this lack of visibility on PlayStation consoles, which complicates the situation for small developers and publishers, is that game sales on Sony consoles are extremely low. On this subject, some creators have agreed to testify by disclosing their names.
WhiteThorn Games’ Matthew Wright says his game sales are split as follows: 60% on Switch, 30% on Xbox, 7% on Steam and only 3% on PlayStation. For his part, Christian Botea of studio / independent editor The Awesome Guys states that his sales are 91.5% on Steam, 7.6% on Switch, 0.6% on Xbox and 0.3% on PlayStation.
Another publisher, who wanted to remain anonymous, reported the sales figures for one of his games, a small independent game that he named Kotaku, but which he did not want to disclose: 20,000 copies on the Xbox against 7,000 on the PlayStation. It also revealed the DLC sales for the same game, and that’s where the delay is even more startling. On Xbox, 2,000 copies of the additional content found buyers while :
At Sony, and that’s no joke, 7 to date (copies have been sold).
According to Kotaku, for many of the developers and publishers he interviewed, a large part of the problem lies in the difficulty of finding games on the PlayStation Store that haven’t been advertised. And he shares the testimony of one of them on the subject:
If your store doesn’t have a location where players can’t find new or interesting games and you literally have to use the search feature to find a game then why are people giving them 30% off.
The 30% mentioned here is the percentage of the retail price of a game that Sony will get back when it is sold on the PlayStation Store. As for the reference to the search tool, several developers have stated that in most cases it is impossible to find a “small” game on PlayStation Store without typing its title directly into the search engine.
For the AAA
And history, to add to the list of independents’ complaints, developers and publishers are also lamenting the difficulty of setting up promotions on the PlayStation Store. As one of them explains, it is only possible to integrate the promotions area of the virtual Sony store if the Japanese manufacturer invites you to:
This is the worst. Nowadays it is only possible to take part in promotions if you are invited to do so. It is no longer possible to set custom discounts or balances associated with a specific publisher / developer. And these invitations are … bloody crazy. Usually they offer a 40-50% commission by default (to join the Promotions tab) and you have to make a counter offer. You say to yourself, “Shit, I have to offer them 30%, otherwise they’ll kick me out.” When you have so much time to spend on promotions on other platforms, trying to come up with a stable pricing policy … God, God, that just ruins the strategy and it’s frustrating.
When Kotaku asks all of these personalities what Microsoft and Nintendo are best at at Sony, the answer is apparently unanimous. Communication with companies in Redmond and Kyoto is much better. On the Microsoft side, they explain that the answers to questions and problems come faster, that the American glove never asks for money, and that the Xbox Game Pass is a financially attractive solution.
On the Nintendo side, even if Mario developers refuse to provide patches over 200 MB without special authorization, the situation is much more comfortable than on PlayStation consoles. for developers and editors as a freelance editor explained:
Amazingly, after years and years, Nintendo has come to listen and now has some of the best tools for developers to use to control their games. We can reduce the price of our games at any time and no matter how much the discount is, everything is under our control. Steam is the only other platform that has one.
According to him, there are several solutions on Switch to promote your games without spending a single dime:
“New Releases, Great Deals” and all of these deals exist and they (Nintendo) also place new releases and resulting price reductions on the Discover tab. I’m not saying it’s amazing, but at least there are methods of discovery. And at the end of the day we sell a lot of games on Switch because people can find our games … Now try to go to the PlayStation Store and find a specific game.
Sony, which has been promoting relationships with independent developers in marketing for several years, would certainly have avoided such advertising. As of the date of this writing, the company run by Jim Ryan has not yet responded to these statements.
Are you surprised by all these statements? Did you suspect that the situation on PlayStation consoles for smaller structures is so complicated? Do you think Sony will react? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
