Apparently You Have to Pay a Lot to Advertise a Game on PS Store
The co-founder of Neon Doctrine criticized the way the PlayStation Store service works. The procedures are slow and not very transparent, and you have to pay a lot for advertising.
- Procedures are slow;
- Developers need permission for discounts and rarely get it;
- Sony chooses to advertise games according to unknown criteria, not taking into account, for example, player wish lists;
- You have to pay at least $25k to get the bare minimum of advertising on PlayStation Store;
- All of this makes it insanely difficult for smaller developers to break through and they don't even know what they should actually be doing to increase their chances of success.
Iain Garner, i.e. the co-founder of Neon Doctrine (publisher of e.g. Vigil: The Longest Night), appears to have lost his temper and published an angry tirade on Twitter. Thanks to this we learned about publicly unknown and very unfavorable conditions for the release of games on PlayStation Store. Although the creator did not mention this service by name, but almost certainly it is about Sony's service. Garner stressed that he is not writing about Microsoft, and Kotaku verified the data and amounts he provided and came to the conclusion that the matter must be related to PS Store.
The developer claims that obtaining advertising for games on PlayStation Store is an ordeal that requires a lot of effort. What's worse, Sony itself decides which game they liked enough to start advertising it. The criteria for such decisions are unknown. They are also not influenced by the number of users who have added a particular game to their wish lists. This results in the fact that all marketing conducted by the devs has no meaning for Sony, even if the developers have managed to get many people interested in their work.
Developers are also required to provide a trailer made specifically for PlayStation Store and write a post on the official blog. These things alone aren't surprising, but they also require the approval of someone acting as a so-called account manager. Sony doesn't tell developers how to get such a partner, limiting itself to stating that they are assigned on an as-needed basis.
Consent is also required for a discounted launch. Such debuts are standard on other platforms and are effective in encouraging many players to buy the game quickly. According to Garner, Sony rarely grants permission for such discounts, so often the PlayStation 4/5 version is the most expensive among all hardware platforms.
If a developer wants Sony to advertise its game, e.g. by showing it on the main page of the store, then the company has to pay a minimum of 25 thousand dollars. For large publishers this amount is nothing but for smaller developers it's a big expense.
After the release, developers also do not have the option to freely introduce discounts. They can't, for example, plan a campaign in which the game will be discounted simultaneously on Steam and PlayStation Store, because Sony allows discounts only for companies which will be invited to participate, and the number of these invitations is always very limited. Neon Doctrine hasn't received permission to discount any of its games for several years. Garner spoke to many other developers, including some currently popular ones, and they, too, have big problems with permission for actions of this kind.
All this does not put the Japanese company in a good light. Competition on the game market is growing, so it is not easy for developers to break through. Garner's words reveall an image that, if true, presents PlayStation Store as a service that makes it difficult to succeed. The procedures are slow and unclear, and the creators have limited opportunities to advertise their works.
Iain Garner concluded his rant with a request to players to address their complaints to Sony, not the developers, in situations when a given game is more expensive on PlayStation 4/5 than on other platforms, or does not appear on these consoles at all.
