Today's main Gamasutra feature, excerpted from the pages of the François Dominic Laramée-edited book
Secrets of the Game Business, is a Jay Powell-authored guide to international publishing deals, weighing the costs and benefits of worldwide and country-specific distribution agreements.
As Powell notes in the introduction to his piece:
"A development studio has been working for months on the next greatest game and now it's time to hit the streets and secure a publisher for the game. They're confronted with their first decision: do they want a single publisher, or multiple publishers?
This article gives developers the information they need to decide whether they want one publisher to handle every territory in the world, or whether it would be better for the company to leverage their risk across multiple publishers. Each model has its advantages and pitfalls, but developers need to have a firm grasp on the development status of their game and what their company needs to move forward."
You can now
read Powell's full article on the subject (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).