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Portables (Games) Entertainment Games

Bonnell Quizzical On PSP, Development Costs Discussed 33

Posted by simoniker from the let-me-pull-a-portable-out-of-my-hat dept.
Thanks to GamesIndustry.biz for its article discussing Atari CEO Bruno Bonnell's comments on the relative mystery of Sony's PSP handheld, arguing that "there's simply not enough information available for publishers to make educated decisions about it." As for development costs for making PSP games, Bonnell cynically estimated: "From one cent to $50 million, I have no idea", suggesting that "there's no way to accurately predict costs on the device at this point." GI.Biz argues: "This is an unusual comment - because one area where Sony has not skimped is on providing development tools for the PSP to its partners", and 1UP has more informative comments from EA CEO Larry Probst at the same financial conference, commenting on PSP dev costs per game: "We're speculating that the $1-2 million range is a good estimate."
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Bonnell Quizzical On PSP, Development Costs Discussed More

Bonnell Quizzical On PSP, Development Costs Discussed

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  • Development tools availability... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xanderwilson ( 662093 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @03:56PM (#9414804) Homepage
    Is this something that only entrenched powerhouses with millions to spend can get their hands on (ie: calling them partners rather than developers) or is an sdk for this or the GBA even possible for an indie developer to access and/or use?

    Alex.

    • Re:Development tools availability... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Who cares? Download the Microsoft Platform/DirectX SDKs, or install your Linux -dev packages and do whatever the funk you wanna do!

      • Re:Development tools availability... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Chris_Jefferson ( 581445 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @07:10AM (#9418482) Homepage
        I often do deving on the GBA, and there are many, many reason someone might want to:

        1) It's MUCH easier and more fun to program for fixed hardware. No need to worry about if the player has a keyboard / mouse (2 or 3 or 9 button?)/ joypad (and then, what joypad). Do they have good openGL support? surround sound 3d? what resolution should the game run at? (Fixing it is kind of necessary for sprite-based games, but will annoy LCD owners) etc. etc.

        2) I love my GBA and I imagine I'll love the PSP. It adds fun to program for small devices. It's a new challenge (for example on the GBA you have 4 background layers and a splattering of rotatable sprites. Its very different to the PC's "graphics is just a single bitmap, redraw it each from").

        3) If you want a job writing games for portable devices, there is no better thing to take to a job interview than a working game :)

        Personally I wish that nintendo, microsoft and sony would losen up on the fan-based deving (yes microsoft will give you a directX dev set, but not a X-box one), but I doubt it will happen any time soon :(
    • is an sdk for this or the GBA even possible for an indie developer to access and/or use?

      FUCK no.

      Well, not without that nice tall fee. $2 million for a calculator game. Anyone with the slightest shred of remaining sanity has long since given up on the "game industry."

  • Answers (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 13, 2004 @05:31PM (#9415375)
    - PSP will cost $875 at retail. It will come with a stylish yet durable aluminum carrying case that is befitting the elitist and pretentious style of the device. I t will also come with a backpack power generator, which will have replaceable faceplates, for when you're in that Nokia mindset.

    - Development costs for the system will run around $7 million per game. Half of that will go to optimizing the location of data on the UMD so that as little disc access is done as possible, minimizing power drain.

    From the first article:

    It isn't just the price that Bonnell says Sony needs to start providing information about, however. "What about the breakable aspects of it?" he asked. "If it breaks, can you bring it back and get another one for free? What about the movie strategy? The Wireless strategy? The MP3 downloading? We don't know. What about the connectivity issues? We don't know. What about the video output? We don't know."


    - Broken systems will be accepted for return within the first 12 hours of purchase only. The detachable, easily-lost screen cover is your 100% guarantee that your screen will never get damaged, unless you're a retard.

    - The movie strategy is key. Sony is aiming for the lucrative "fringe format" buyer, in the same way that they handled the bustling 8mm video market. Millions of Sony 8mm and Hi8 camcorders were sold in the 1990s, and Sony formed a catalog of movies that were released in this format, specifically for all those people with 8mm camcorders to watch. And that sprouted an industry all by itself, didn't it?

    - Sony's wireless strategy makes sense. WiFi for everything is much simpler for the programmers to wrap their heads around. Who cares that WiFi draws a great deal of power even for same-room, multi-player gaming? What, game players do? Oh.

    - Downloading MP3s will be simple and fun! As soon as an MP3 comes anywhere near the PSP, it is processed through the PSP's obviously powerful "decoder." It then gets enhanced by Sony's exclusive and amazing "ATRAC" technology, which makes these lucky enhanced audio files sound ALMOST as good as when they were still MP3s, even on a portable platform. Can you believe it's possible? Sony does.

    - Connectivity to PS2 will be painless. Simply plug it in and go, for as long as the battery will last. Exciting new PS2 games that are designed to be played for less than 2 hours at a stretch will be released to coincide with PSP connectivity, so that gamers can experience very few interruptions in their gameplay. That's the Sony difference! And in the future, PS3 will feature a new controller port that will provide ample power on the bus to power the PSP.

    - Video output? No video output. [ign.com] What the hell are you smoking, Bonnell? That would mean that the PSP would compete with Sony's portable DVD players! UMD format content creators would have to optimize for normal TV screens as well as the forgiving PSP screen! And content creators would also be put off by piracy concerns, particularly when UMD video is expected to be quite costly! Don't you know anything?

    All in all, only 35 bellies at SCEI have been slit over the PSP so far. Not too shabby!

  • This guy again? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sandalwood ( 196527 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @05:42PM (#9415436)
    If anybody needed further proof that Bruno Bonnell is an idiot, look no further. After effectively running his company into the ground, he now masks his company's technical inability to provide launch titles for this platform by criticizing Sony and directing attention away from the critical problems at his own company.

    EA, Activision, and other US developers do not seem to be having the same problems he is with supporting the PSP. Even without pricing information it's strategically important to have titles on these new machines, just in case they take off - that's why most major publishers decided to put out some games for the N-Gage as well. And if Bruno Bonnell can't estimate development costs, when the technical specs of the machine are already well-known to developers, what is he doing in charge of a video game company?

    • Not to mention pissing off Sony, surely one of his key business partners, in the process. Not smart.
    • None of them have final dev hardware yet(well EA doesn't, and if EA doesn't, no one does).

      Kinda tough to nail down a development cost estimate when you don't even have final development systems, especially considering it's SONY.

      Here are some specs, they may change, in fact they probably will at least once between now and the first time the thing is publically played in September. Now, write code for it.

      As to the person who replied who stated it's a bad idea to piss Sony off. No it isn't. Gamers go whe
      • The development hardware may not be final and the specs may change, of course. But the point is that, based on what we have now, real estimates can still be made - not "anywhere from fifty cents to fifty million".
    • One particularly telling comment, however, was on the topic of development costs - where Bonnell ranted that "From one cent to $50 million, I have no idea."

      Well, that explains what happened to Infogrames.

  • Variable development costs.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Development costs will probably stabilise once the developers know how big the market is going to be.

    It wouldn't suprise me if developers were going all-out for launch titles - being on the shelf at day zero right next to the brand new hardware is important to support a new machine. Once the platform has launched they can settle back when they're have more of an idea how big the market is going to be and how many titles (and the value of those titles) that the market can support.

    So that's why he doesn't k
    • being on the shelf at day zero right next to the brand new hardware is important to support a new machine.

      Isn't it interesting how the entire "business case" process is backwards when it comes to the big companies?

      A small company would have to have market share in order to get publishers to develop for their console. A small company would have to overcome the "chicken and egg" problem.

      Tall Dollars Inc. just has to say "here's our new product" and everyone (including developers) lines right up.

  • It's About Consumer Cost (Score:4, Insightful)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @07:13PM (#9415855)
    I have heard people say this hollywood budget movie is huge, let's go see it. I have never heard people say EA spent a cazillion $$ on this game, let's go see it. It's sad that every industry is setting the quality of its product by how much freaking money they pump in to make it.

  • As more and more people come to realize the PSP isn't going to end up a gaming machine.
  • ...Sony simply doesn't want Atari to throw bad games at the PSP?
  • Except from what little I can gather it seems to actually be a simplified version of the platform. As such it should be easier to grasp, no pun intended. The development system will probably have a similar cost to the PS2 development system. As such, it should cost about as much to put out a PSP game as it does to put out a PS2 game.

    • As such, it should cost about as much to put out a PSP game as it does to put out a PS2 game.

      GBA games cost 30 USD each at retail. If PSP games will run at 50 USD each like PS2 games, then what parent will buy not only one copy of a PSP game but two or three for multiplayer? Or will PSP games have useful single-disc multiplayer modes?

      • Well, I perhaps misspoke - releasing a game which is as featureful as a PS2 game for the PSP will probably cost about the same as releasing it for the PS2. Releasing a GBA-like game will probably be cheaper. Actually, it will probably be cheaper than doing it on the GBA, because both Sony and Nintendo are known for their licensing savvy, meaning how to milk money out of developers, so the cost will probably be similar, but the PSP is vastly more powerful which means much less optimization need be done to ge

        • Releasing a GBA-like game [on the PS2] ... will probably be cheaper than doing it on the GBA, because both Sony and Nintendo are known for their licensing savvy, meaning how to milk money out of developers, so the cost will probably be similar, but the PSP is vastly more powerful which means much less optimization need be done to get the same type of results.

          That is, unless Sony bans 2D games entirely, as it did at the start of the PS1 era (to distinguish the system from the Sega Saturn, which was a 2D

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