Gamestop has just announced their publishing division Game Trust
Gamestop intends to launch/publish five to ten games every year. The new publishing division is more along the lines of 505 Games, and Team 17 acting as a brand name, unlike other companies such as Activision or EA, with developers keeping full rights to their IP and GameStop/GameTrust not being involved with the development side of things.
They have signed new games from a few well-known independent studios such as Ready at Dawn (The Order: 1886), Frozenbyte, Insomniac, and many other developers that they are in the talks with.
Stanley explains that their publishing division isn’t there to only publish a game, they are ready to fully fund the development of a game and will also help finish a game off and get it out to the public.
Every IP GameTrust is working with are smaller-scale games in the lower mid tier games not AAA, and not indie but just in between. All of these games have a budget of $15million or lower, but they are treating these games as if they were AAA.
GameStop will be using their full set of resources to promote these games ensuring a good amount of sales, they are also planning to team up with their ThinkGeek division and create merchandise before the games even launch.
They aren’t limiting releasing games to just a certain platform, they use Netflix to compare their model to. Netflix had hired multiple directors and screenplays for their own Originals, and they are taking the same approach, but to video games.
Mark Stanley also goes to say “Right now that there is no big expectation
for this to be the next billion dollar business for GameStop.” Which there is no doubt to, but he doesn’t expect to have $1billion on his doorsteps tomorrow morning.