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GameStop announced their new games publishing division today that they're calling GameTrust. GameTrust has already signed up some fairly major developers to its new company including Insomniac (Ratchet & Clank), Ready at Dawn (The Order: 1886), Frozenbyte (Trine), and Tequila Works (Rime).In addition to these confirmed developers, GameStop's Vice President of Internal Development & Diversification, Mark Stanley, says that the company has another 18-20 developers that they have been in talks with. GameTrust says that their focus will be on smaller scale titles such as the upcoming Song of the Deep from Insomniac. The publisher says that they want to stay away from AAA releases, at least for now.
"There's a largely ignored smaller budget games market in our industry and there are a lot of developers who've expressed interest in making smaller games but they've seen challenges getting support," Stanley said. "We have the flexibility of being able to either partially fund or fully fund a project for development, but also we bring in all the different aspects of promotion, marketing, merchandizing and truly developing a new IP as if it were AAA. As a developer when you have a new IP that you've created, kind of like your baby, being able to launch it as an AAA [title] is pretty cool. We have the support of the GameStop board with the birth of this new vertical... [and] we're really taking our time, looking at which partners make sense for a symbiotic relationship. We start conversations all the time with developers on potential projects and some may move forward and some may not but if we start with that really solid footing of vetting out the relationship before we even talk about a game, then by the time we begin talking about a game it's all pretty much positive."
This focus on smaller titles should place the prices for most of their published games in the $15 to $40 range. GameTrust expects to release between 5-10 games in its first year, though no set number has been revealed just yet.
This move is no doubt a response to the dying retail and used games' market. I just wonder what the response will be when people trade in GameTrust published titles to other retailers.
(via GI.biz)
