I don't believe it. If that's true, that's crap for publishers. But its also crap for console makers. If it costs that much money to front a game, then there is a chance I might not print as many game and this could also result in less sales and consequently less money for the Console makers. It wouldn't be in anyone's interest to have this way(unless you're nintendo during the cartridge era).
I think I remember that this is true. So I can imagine that in some cases it's going to be hard for a publisher to make money, and that the royalties for the console manufacturor can be a lot better per disc sold depending on how successful a publisher is. Talking about Nintendo, they charge almost the same for the Wii as Sony does, which combined with a lower RRP for games on the Wii, means even lower margins for third party developers. Of course their costs should also be lower (though I've heard complaints that the extra investment in motion control support can cancel this out partly), but the risk in printing 200.000 copies and not selling them remains similar.
So yeah, I agree with Shifty that basically digital distribution is a god-send, because you only have that initial investment, and you can also afford to make smaller games at much lower prices and still be cost effective enough to sell them at a profit.
It also means that first party publishers (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft) have a distinct advantage in that they don't have to worry about that licencing fee, which is partly why Sony's own publisehd games have an RRP at typically at least $10 below that of third parties.
On the other hand of course the platform holders make rather much (!) larger investments in creating and maintaining the (hardware and software of the) platform, which is basically what Sony's answer means.
But it's a fair battleground and I would be surprised if there is never any discussion about this between platform holder and publisher. If Activision thinks Sony is in a vulnerable enough position to negotiate, they're free to do so however they see fit. However, for multi-platform development I have to say that I personally doubt that the relatively small investment of supporting an additional platform, even the PS3, should ever outweigh the benefits of leveraging the large investments already made in designing the game, creating the art assets and so on on another platform. Once you've already got these investments covered, then margin on selling your game probably goes up from a few bucks to maybe 20$ or more and I think you'd only need 20.000-80.000 sales to cover the additional cost of the PS3 programmers. Still, I can imagine that in some cases where playtesting is expensive, you need several programmers for a few years and don't leverage a company wide engine, say, and you're not sure you're even going to make 60.000 sales, then it may not be worth porting your game in the end.
Anyway, in the end everyone including Sony I think agrees that the PS3 should go down in price, also to support the PS3's own software investments in titles such as God of War 3 and properly support something like the new motion controller.
You also know that publishers have finite budgets. So why do you think it's impossible that a major publisher would drop PS3 in a few years and instead shift all those dollars to a new cash cow?
