PSN puts studios â??in weaker negotiating positionâ??

Sony gives itself a distinct advantage over indie studios by waiting late to approve PSN projects, a leading UK developer has claimed.

Mark Morris, MD of British indies Introversion, claims that Sony’s tendency to bide time before approving PSN games means projects are at the point of no return by the time Sony begins its review process.

“With Microsoft your approval is given at the start, as long as you deliver what you said you’d deliver you’re going to launch,” Morris told CVG.

“It’s not like that with Sony. Sony’s clearance for launch comes quite later and you have to invest quite a lot of time before you get it.

“That’s a problem because it means you have to invest a lot of time and effort and then you’re in a much weaker negotiating position because they could turn around and say ‘we don’t want it’.”