ESRB Approval Forces High Price on PSP Minis
As you may have noticed, there are several titles available on the PSN in the form of the new PSP Minis. These PSP Minis are also on the App Store for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch. Many have complained that some of the Minis are too high in price compared to the App Store counterparts. One glaring reason behind the price difference is the necessity of having an ESRB rating on the Mini titles.
Sony doesn’t allow a game to grace their console(s) without an ESRB rating, and there is no way around this. If there is no rating, the game will not appear on any Sony console.
Sergei Gourski, the developer of Fieldrunners, had this to say:
“You have to invest some money into dev kits and into getting ratings for your game. The costs of ratings such as ESRB is significantly more then we had realized”
The estimated cost of the ESRB rating alone is around $2,500. Since games on the App Store do not require an ESRB rating, they get away with a much cheaper asking price.
[Source]
12 Responses to “ESRB Approval Forces High Price on PSP Minis”
Interesting.
ESRB likes to take money
Well I’m surprised that ESRB is actually that cheap, but not in relation to minis, of course. For a game retailing at $60, $2500 is nothing–just sell about 42 games and you’ve recouped the cost of the rating (of course we’re not counting production,advertisement, or anything into that mix, just using that as a point of comparison) whereas you’d have to sell 500 $5 games to make up for the price of ESRB. Some of these minis, I just don’t know if they’re all that appealing to me, so I wouldn’t buy them at any cost, and I feel like the developers must be hurting with that. Add to the fact that they do have to pay for development, advertisement, publishing, securing rights over their IP and I wonder if they ever recoup their costs.
That’s bullshit. Sony needs to drop this mandatory B.S. It isn’t hurting the iTouch/Phone not having ESRB ratings.
There’s potential for a new and cheaper rating system company.
It’s BS they are making money, they just want to justify it keeping prices high. C’mon $2500 is what some executives spend on lunch.. good grief
Just watch a show like Shark Tank or Dragon’s Den and listen to what stuff costs businesses to prioduce and sell. 1 game sells millions of units, comes down to pennies per piece. A better way would be to do away with region differences, allow any copy to play on any machine. One universal format, then just change language tracks.
@Captnstryker
thats the PS3 in a nut shell (any copy plays in any machine)..
The problem is mostly rating system vary from place to place. You can go to YesAsia.com and find english written and spoken games not in the US.. like demons Soul was released on Feb.. yet ,it took them 8 months with nothing added.. (not that it needed it). Afrika’s been out for a long ass time and it just came out here.. thats not even a violent game. Instead of getting rid of DLC for a region (because they vary per location) They should make Credit card deduct the funds from your account like a normal purchase. For Added security add a currency converter. It would be no diffrent than you going to that country and buying the item and bringing it home. Or join all PSN stores and seperate them by languages.
Smells like BS to me, so they are saying the one time $2,500 esrb rating fee is why EA, one of the largest video game companies in the world, whose profits are counted in billions, THAT’S why they are charging $10 for Tetris?
SMH…
Sounds like capitolism at it’s finest.
In Soviet Russia the game rates you.
nice read! I just got my new PS slim last week, it’s pretty good
Sincerly,
Sodagod @ Modern Warfare 2 Forums
This is such garbage. It’s a free rating, the force to rate games comes from pressure from housewives (don’t take this literally). Apple knew they wouldn’t need it, and their advisory panel works just as well as a rating by a board. I understand and agree with ESRB, i just can’t figure out how this service can be charged…
and strangely as I’m typing this, it washes over me that i’m in fact, not that surprised by this at all.
free gay porn videos bareback…
free gay porn video…