Machinarium Developer Moves to Sony after MS Rejection

Last October, among the release of huge console titles, Machinarium debuted to the PC gaming crowd. The point-and-click adventure brought on positive reviews, and was praised for its wordless dialogue, plus the challenging puzzles the game included. The title was on it’s way to Xbox Live Arcade, but unfortunately, mega-company Microsoft refused to publish it. Now, it’s only natural for developer Amanita Design to move onto the next major competing platform – PlayStation Network.

Amanita Design founder Jakub Dvorský has confirmed that Machinarium has been submitted to Sony for approval. The submission was made after Microsoft refused the title for it’s Xbox Live Arcade platform, largely due to the fact that the game did not have a publisher. Microsoft’s official policy (according to Dvorsky) is that the company does not publish titles that are not exclusive to the Xbox platform. Dvorsky recently spoke with gaming website Joystiq via email.

“They told us, ‘It’s not Microsoft-exclusive, we don’t want it.’ They didn’t cite the Mac and Linux versions [as reasons for the refusal] but it’s quite clear that’s the reason. It means if we want to release the game on XBLA we must throw, probably, most of the profit out of the window — to the publisher. Just because we created Mac and Linux versions.”

Amanita Design had no interest in submitting to Sony while waiting for a response from Microsoft, until the refusal. “We submitted the game to Sony after Microsoft refused it,” Dvorsky announced. Unlike Microsoft, Sony does not have developers require a publisher for their titles.

[Source]

TRENDING