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A ‘leaked’ document from Sony, which is in fact available to download from Sony’s publisher and developer relations site TPRnet, has confirmed the broad details behind its new Minis game program.
As we revealed in mid July, the new scheme is designed to promote the creation of ‘small games and applications’ for the PSP.
100MB in size, the games are supposed to be ‘easy to store and quick to download and play… require no additional peripherals… can be any type or genre of game… and will appear in a new category coming to PlayStation store’.
Also as we detailed in July, the games will be vetted via shorter QA and minimal approval system.
"SCEE aims to make this process as quick and simple as possible for developers, whilst at the same time ensuring PlayStation consumer benefit from quality, fully functional games," says the process guidelines document for PSP Minis.
"There is no requirement for content approval," the materials add, pointing out that the Minis program is already open for business, ahead of the service’s launch alongside the PSPgo on October 1st.
The materials, clearly designed to attract new developers to developing Minis games – which will be sold in their own dedicated area of the PlayStation Store – add that SCEE ‘offers favourable business terms to minis publishers and developers’.
Specifically, that includes: "a competitive business model; revenue realised on a monthly basis; no penalities for minimum sales; no quote on number of games releases on PlayStation Store; publisher retains control of release dates; no bandwidth charges".
Clearly, Sony is keen to draw as many distinctions and promote as many benefits as it can when Minis are compared to iPhone Apps – or even bigger PlayStation Network games, which do incur bandwidth charges.
To develop Minis games, developers need to have a PSP dev tool – the current price for which is €1,200.
The document in full can be found here.
TPRnet can be found here.
