Video game publisher

A video game publisher is a company that publishes

video games that they have either developed internally
or have had developed by a video game developer. As
with book publishers or publishers of DVD movies,
video game publishers are responsible for their products
manufacturing and marketing, including market research
and all aspects of advertising.

a marketing launch is planned around that date, including advertising commitments, and then after all
the advertising is paid for, the development sta
announces that the game will slip, and will actually be ready several months later than originally
intended. When the game nally appears, the effects among consumers of the marketing launch
excitement and buzz over the release of the game
and an intent to purchase have dissipated, and lackluster interest leads to weak sales. An example of
this is the PSP version of Spider-Man 3.[1] These
problems are compounded if the game is supposed
to ship for the Christmas selling season, but actually slips into the subsequent year. Some developers
(notably id and Epic) have alleviated this problem
by simply saying that a given game will be released
when its done, only announcing a denite date
once the game is released to manufacturing. However, this sometimes can be problematic as well, as
seen with Duke Nukem Forever.

They often nance the development, sometimes by paying a video game developer (the publisher calls this external development) and sometimes by paying an internal
sta of developers called a studio. The large video game
publishers also distribute the games they publish, while
some smaller publishers instead hire distribution companies (or larger video game publishers) to distribute the
games they publish. Other functions usually performed
by the publisher include deciding on and paying for any
licenses used by the game; paying for localization; layout,
printing, and possibly the writing of the user manual; and
the creation of graphic design elements such as the box
design.

The industry has become more hit driven over

the past decade.[2][3][4] Consumers buy the game
thats best-marketed but not necessarily of the highest quality, therefore buying fewer other games in
that genre. This has led to much larger game development budgets, as every game publisher tries to
ensure that its game is #1 in its category. It also
caused publishers to on occasion force developers
to focus on sequels of successful franchises instead
of exploring original IP; some publishers such as
Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts have both
attracted criticism for acquiring studios with original games, and assigning them to support roles in
more mainstream franchises.[5][6]

Large publishers may also attempt to boost eciency

across all internal and external development teams by providing services such as sound design and code packages
for commonly needed functionality.
Because the publisher often nances development, it usually tries to manage development risk with a sta of
producers or project managers to monitor the progress of
the developer, critique ongoing development, and assist
as necessary. Most video games created by an external
video game developer are paid for with periodic advances
on royalties. These advances are paid when the developer
reaches certain stages of development, called milestones.

Business risks

Games are becoming more expensive to produce.[7]

Current generation consoles have more advanced
graphic capabilities than previous consoles. Taking advantage of those capabilities requires a larger
team-size than games on earlier, simpler consoles.
In order to compete with the best games on these
consoles, there are more characters to animate; all
characters must be modeled with a higher level of
detail; more textures must be created; the entire art
pipeline must be made more complex to allow the
creation of normal maps and more complex programming code is required to simulate physics in the
game world, and to render everything as precisely
and quickly as possible. On this generation of consoles, games commonly require budgets of US$15

Video game publishing is associated with high risk:

The Christmas selling season accounts for about a
quarter of the industrys yearly sales of video and
computer games, leading to a concentrated inux of
high-quality competition every year in every game
category, all in the fourth quarter of the year.
Product slippage is common due to the uncertain
schedules of software development. Most publishers have suered a false launch, in which the development sta assures the company that game development will be completed by a certain date, and
1

5
million to $20 million. Activisions Spider-Man 3,
for example, cost US$35 million to develop, not
counting the cost of marketing and sales.[8] Every
game nanced is, then, a large gamble, and pressure
to succeed is high.
Contrasting with the big budget titles increased expense of front-line console
games is the casual game market, in
which smaller, simpler games are published for PCs and as downloadable console games. Also, Nintendos Wii console, though debuting in the same generation as the PlayStation 3[9] and the Xbox
360,[10] requires a smaller development
budget, as innovation on the Wii is centered around the use of the Wii Remote
and not around the graphics pipeline.
When publishing for game consoles, game publishers take on the burden of a great deal of inventory
risk. All signicant console manufacturers since
Nintendo with its NES (1985) have monopolized
the manufacture of every game made for their console, and have required all publishers to pay a royalty
for every game so manufactured. This royalty must
be paid at the time of manufacturing, as opposed
to royalty payments in almost all other industries,
where royalties are paid upon actual sales of the
productand, importantly, are payable for games
that did not sell to a consumer. So, if a game publisher orders one million copies of its game, but half
of them do not sell, the publisher has already paid
the full console manufacturer royalty on one million
copies of the game, and has to absorb that cost.

Investor interest

Numerous video game publishers are traded publicly on

stock markets. As a group, they have had mixed performance. At present, Electronic Arts is the only third-party
publisher present in the S&P 500 diversied list of large
U.S. corporations; in April 2010, it entered the Fortune
500 for the rst time.[11]
Hype over video game publisher stocks has been breathless at two points:
In the early 1990s, the introduction of CD-ROM
computer drives caused hype about a multimedia
revolution that would bring interactive entertainment to the masses. Several Hollywood movie studios formed interactive divisions to prot in this
allegedly booming new media. Most of these divisions later folded after expensively producing several games that were heavy in full-motion video
content, but light in the quality of gameplay.

REFERENCES

In the United States, revenue from the sales of video

and computer games exceeded revenue from lm
box-oce receipts for the rst time in the dot-com
days of the late 1990s, when technology companies in general were surrounded by hype. The video
game publishers did not, however, experience the
same level of rise in stock prices that many dotcom companies saw. This was probably because
video game publishing was seen as a more mature industry whose prospects were fairly well understood, as opposed to the typical exciting dotcom business model with unknown but possibly skyhigh prospects. While many technology stocks were
eventually destroyed in the dot-com crash in the
early 2000s, the stock prices of the video game publishers recovered as a group; several of the larger
publishers such as EA and Take-Two Interactive
achieved historical highs in the mid-2000s.

3 Rankings
3.1 Major publishers
Below are the largest publishers in general according to
their revenue in BIllions of Euros.[12]

3.2 Mid-size publishers

Below are the top AA (midsize) video game publishers,
ranked by Metacritic in January 2014 based on game quality according to reviews.[13] These lists are based on the
ranking by best to worst publishers according to metacritics website. Note that two major publishers, TakeTwo Interactive and Sega fell to mid-size and one, Square
Enix, jumped from mid-size to major. Three mid-size
publishers ranked in 2013 were dropped from 2014 chart,
namely Xseed Games and Kalypso Media. Note also that
iOS games were not included in the gures.
[1] Was #1 as a major publisher
[2] Was #7 as a major publisher

4 See also
Console manufacturer
Independent video game development
List of video game publishers

5 References
[1] http://www.joystiq.com/2007/10/09/
months-late-spider-man-3-goes-to-psp-with-new-content/

?onswipe_redirect=no&oswrr=3&oswrtu=
EaWxSr0ebYbcwjlOfV24Ww==
[2] Matthews, Matt (19 April 2012). Has video game retail
become an entirely 'hits driven' industry?". Retrieved 12
August 2013.
[3] "'White space' helps us understand the strategic direction
of gaming mergers and acquisitions. Retrieved 12 August
2013.
[4] Messina, Judith (31 July 2013). Color Zen throws spotlight on citys games scene. Retrieved 12 August 2013.
[5] Activision Reduces Prototype Devs To Support Role,
Signicantly Reduces Sta Levels. TheSixthAxis. 201206-28. Retrieved 2012-08-17.
[6] Activision cuts sta at 'Prototype' video game studio.
Content.usatoday.com. 2012-06-28. Retrieved 2012-0817.
[7] Zee, Mike (25 July 2013). Are Video Games Getting
More Expensive Than They're Worth?". Yahoo Voices.
Retrieved 12 August 2013.
[8] Activision exec prices PS3 games from GameSpot
[9] http://ru.playstation.com/ps3/ PlayStation 3
[10] http://www.xbox.com/ru-RU/xbox-360/why-xbox-360
Xbox 360
[11] Electronic Arts Breaks Into Fortune 500, Leigh Alexander, April 26, 2010, gamasutra.com. Fetched from Web
on April 26, 2010.
[12] http://www.statista.com/statistics/273838/
revenue-of-the-largest-video-game-publishers-worldwide/
#
[13] Metacritics 5th Annual Game Publisher Rankings,
metacritic.com, CBS Interactive Inc., January 30, 2014

6 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

6.1

Text

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