PS One Classics - who publishes them?

[Kitsune Sniper]

As a few of you folks know, I do work at MobyGames as an approver and researcher for games and such on my spare time. Lately I've been adding the PSOne Classic releases to the site, but I hit a bit of a snag which I hope you folks can help me with.

The thing is, I can't find out who publishes the games themselves on the PSP/PS3. The ESRB says Sony Computer Entertainment America does it, and so do some online articles (which have no sources.) But has it been officially stated -anywhere-? I typically double check stuff via VGRebirth, but they have no info on digital releases (so far). The game listings in the Playstation Store aren't very clear about it, and it doesn't seem like Sony's press releases mention this either.

So who publishes the damn games?

[kupomogli]

This is only an assumption, but I'd think it would be Sony publishing them but would still need to get the rights from the original publishers.

[Shadow Kisuragi]

I'm not familiar with how the releases work for PS One Classics, although this begs the question: Wouldn't the publisher change based on region for Sony?
If the titles are straight ports, then the developer is the same developer for the original title.

[Graham Mitchell]

Well, this is just a guess, but you'll notice that there are only a few publishers whose games appear in the PSN store, specifically Konami, Capcom, Irem, and most recently Square, as well as a lot of first party SCEA-published games. Those publishers have several of their own games on there, and they're publishers that still exist today. Based on this, I would infer that the respective publishers (or whoever the copyright holder is today) publishes them on their own.

I'm pretty sure this is how it works on the Wii Virtual Console. The in-game manuals even list the publishers on some of those games (ie-hudson publishes all the TG-16 ports, etc.)

[ProgrammingAce]

That's because with the brave new world of digital distribution, the term "publisher" doesn't really apply.

Traditionally the publisher usually pays for the creation of the game in return for part of the profits and usually rights to the IP. For things like PS1 clasics, that's something of a null point because distribution is nearly free and the cost of development was paid a decade ago.

So by technical definition, the publisher would be Sony; They publish the game to the platform. However, they own no rights to the title. So you can easily have a scenerio where the developer is Enix, the publisher is Sony, and the rights holder is Square Enix.

In other words, you guys may want to reconsider how you handle downloadable titles...

[Kitsune Sniper]

I've been adding release dates and platforms with SCEA as a publisher, and the original publisher as a uh, co-publisher, if it still exists. So for example, Metal Gear Solid would be copublished by SCEA and Konami. All other information remains the same.

I've looked into original publishers' websites, it doesn't look like anyone even mentions the PS3/PSP platform releases. Konami didn't say anything about Metal Gear or Castlevania: SOTN, XS Games didn't say anything about that soccer game of theirs, Capcom didn't mention the SFA games they released... The only one that DID is Square-Enix (FF7) but that's about it.

It's a confusing mess.

[kupomogli]

So by technical definition, the publisher would be Sony; They publish the game to the platform. However, they own no rights to the title. So you can easily have a scenerio where the developer is Enix, the publisher is Sony, and the rights holder is Square Enix.

Yes! My answer was the correct one.