Former PlayStation CEO Jack Tretton is a legend in the video game business - and now he's starting a new company with a radical business model to shake up the industry
- Game industry veteran and former PlayStation CEO Jack Tretton is starting a new company focused on video games.
- The company is named Interactive Gaming Ventures; the goal is to partner with indie game developers by providing capital and management assistance.
- Unlike the traditional game publisher model, Interactive Gaming Ventures acts like a publisher partner.
If you've played any PlayStation console across the past 30 years, you're familiar with Jack Tretton's work.
The long-time Sony employee starting working in the PlayStation division before Sony was fully convinced it would ever become a player in the video-game industry. He ended his career at the Japanese electronics giant in 2014 as the president and CEO of Sony's PlayStation group, having ushered in the outrageously successful PlayStation 4 the year prior.
He's kind of a big deal - which is why it's so fascinating that he's starting a new video game company, named Interactive Gaming Ventures, that's focused on ushering smaller games to market.
"We formed Independent Gaming Ventures with money backed inside the industry, with industry understanding," Tretton told me in a phone interview this week. "We're targeting two to three projects a year where we can work very closely with successful indie developers that've had some degree of commercial success in the past, but are looking for some management advice, some financial contribution to help grow their business a little bit sooner than they could on their own."
On paper, it sounds like Tretton's starting a new game publisher along the lines of EA and Activision - but there are some key differences from the traditional game publisher model. For one, Interactive Gaming Ventures won't own the rights to the game after publishing.
"Our interest is really in the game itself," Tretton said. "We invest specifically in the game itself - the developer owns the IP [intellectual property], the developer controls the actual process of developing."
That's meaningful! Traditionally, a game publisher like EA or Activision agrees to publish an independent studio's game in exchange for rights to that game. The game studio is paid for that project, and when it's finished, the publisher owns the IP. In the case of Interactive Gaming Ventures, the game's developer owns the IP and retains control of the project's development.
"We'll provide financial support with milestones," Tretton said, "But when the game ultimately goes to market, we'll take a percentage of the income in return for our investment. And hopefully we'll share in the success together. It's really more of a royalty-based investment."
Tretton's not alone in this new business - he's working with Studio Wildcard CEO Doug Kennedy, a man who's most well-known recently for the insane survival game "Ark: Survival Evolved."
That game's tale of success - from an unfinished "Early Access" release to a major console game - serves as a model for the type of game that Interactive Gaming Ventures intends to release.
"We're looking to make investments in two to three projects a year, probably between $1 and $5 million per project, with studios that've had some degree of commercial success," Tretton said. More specifically, Tretton's looking for games that "publish on PC first in early access, and then ultimately roll out to consoles."
As it turns out, some of the biggest games in the past 10 years followed exactly that path: Both "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" and "Minecraft" started out on PC only, eventually making their way to consoles in more polished forms.
With Interactive Gaming Ventures just getting off the ground, there are no projects to speak about just yet - but Tretton's timed his company's announcement to the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, which kicks off next week.