Sony paying developers for PS3 ideas

Sony have confirmed they are financing development ‘think-tanks’ with game developers being paid for coming up with great ideas for PS3 downloadable games.

Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios head Phil Harrison revealed that Sony is paying developers to come up with interesting ideas for downloadable PS3 games.

“We announced an initiative from a worldwide studios perspective at GDC this year as a call to action to the development community to encourage them to create games specifically for us, that we would fund, that we would publish, in the online sense of the word, and distribute online,” he said. “We’re developing about 40 products that fit that strategy right now. We showed the very first one of those, called flOw, at the Tokyo Game Show for the first time. That got a really, really good response.”

“My strategy was to encourage developers to push the machine technically, creatively, artistically – to innovate in lots of different ways. But don’t be restricted by ghettoising games into a particular genre, or a particular display mechanic, because what we’ve seen on other systems tend to be retro 2D games,” he continued as he issued that slight jab to Xbox Live Arcade, “and we’re pushing the 3D capabilities of the PlayStation 3. Plus, the fact that every PS3 has a hard disc drive means that we’re not restricted by the size of the download, and that has a huge impact on the kind of game design that you can do.”