@UrbanMessiah:I would like to correct your statement. Dead Island took over 9 years to be developed and had its development team replaced 4 times. Originally, it was an Indie project which was more around survival and crafting from as back as 2002. After 2 years, the project only had a couple of screenshots and a tech-demo video available on a relatively simple website. The project was halted after 2 years and 1 years later, some of the original member of the team were hired by Deep Silver for another project. They revived the project with a new skeleton team a bit after. Things went on for 1 years until some internal struggle forced Deep Silver to bring the project to another team (3rd team to work on the project). That team kept working on Dead Island until 2010 where, again, an internal struggle exploded between Deep Silver and the development team. (Basically, the dead line couldn't be met and Deep Silver refused to extend the deadline.) Deep Silver sub-contracted the project to Techland with not even half of the original budget and over 80% of the game to be remade or simply not done yet in less than a single year.

Dead Island is an example of what happens when a indie project goes viral, then get hooked to a publisher only to loose its identity over the many struggles that keeps slowing it down.

For example, the original world-wide liked trailer of Dead Island (the reversed slow-mo video) was displaying a kid turning into a zombie... Something that was indeed planned in the project since day 1: Having both kids and adults where kids are more agile and less resistant variation of the zombies. This was scrapped in early 2011, 6 months before the releases because there were issues with the rating of the game and the game would have ended up banned from some countries due to the suggestive violence against minors. (All the children' models, bodies and parts were removed from the world.)

Techland did uses what they learned about what's "ok" and what's "not ok" which was displayed in Dying Light where the children are more like alien than kids (gray skin, deformed, etc.)

From what we can see, the exact same story is happening with Dead Island 2 and, now, they got the Dying Light as a "standard" to catch up to which completely changed the "game" for Deep Silver.

@supertamal2000:

• Piracy : Yeah that's an obvious thing. It's well known how fast a game released is being pirated. Hell, some have even been pirated before being released. (Which obviously display a leaking source.)

• Anti-Cheat : Unlike the console, the PC usually requires more work to ensure players aren't cheating. Be it something like duping or using 3rd party software. It's a lot easier to make those on a PC game than a console.

• Compatibility : This is one thing that is so much heavier on PC than on console. Consoles usually have limited diversity in their hardware. Sure, each edition has different hardware manufacturer, but it's usually "If it worked with the <cheapest> edition, it works with all editions". In this regards, if they were testing the game on the Dev kits of the first edition (non Pro-PS4 and first Xbox One) and it worked "fine", then it, in theory, should work fine with the Pro/X. They still test things out in the later edition, but it's nothing alike to the PC testing phase.

After all, the PC market has way too many hardware possibility. For example, you might have a Nvidia Ti in your PCs and you think it's a beast, but you might not know that there are 28 variations of the Nvidia Ti, all made by about 11 different manufacturers. Each are using different stuff to make their hardware. Your Nvidia Ti might be the lowest in terms of quality which can be as much as 38% less powerful than another Nvidia Ti from another manufacturer while the specs are, on paper, the same. That's just an example. Imagine the damn cluster of tests devices required to just get an idea that the game is stable on both AMD and Intel CPU as well as AMD and Nvidia GPU. The last thing you want, when you release a game, is for people to request refunds because the game barely run on their PC. (Just think of FFIX original launch as an example.)

• Negotiations : Where and who's gonna distribute the game? Steam? Origin? UPlay? Direct Download (from website)? GoG? All those have different kind of "deal" and fees involved. There might be some of those who are still being negotiated. You would be surprised how much money is involved when, on Steam for example, you negotiate between a deal where Steam's cut is 14% or 15% of the sale. It's not for nothing that Steam explicitly request that no developer give a clear view (to the public) of how they are managing their cut on the games sold. Some give vague numbers and some small indie, sometimes, let it out, but you'll never hear big project saying it because they know they had a better deal.

You might think "this is already decided", but the reality is that negotiation with digital distributors last until the last 24-48 hours before releases. The most easy way of knowing if the negotiation is done is by... looking if the pre-order are available on a platform. Monster Hunter World doesn't have any PC pre-order yet. This means they are not fixed in terms of digital distribution yet.

Any comment given by any Sony representative regarding the additions (and costs) related to the PS4 and its online capacity is actually either fake or reversal truth (to not say "lies").

First, the main difference between the XBox Live online service and the PS3/PS4 online service that Microsoft offer hosting services within their own server system for a really competitive price while Sony doesn't offer any services of this kind unless a contract is signed (I won't explain what this contract is including, but let's say that it's mostly allow Sony a % of any sales related to the product to be hosted, as well as Sony's role as a part or full publisher)

All that Sony is offering is what I call "General hosting management" services : a low capacity sub-server which allow the players to access their PSN account related information for in-game content. (It manage things like DLCs and anything that might be pass in and out of a game.) The truth is that development companies (or publisher whenever applicable) actually already pay for that service in different ways (based on how the game is distributed and its sales)

By paying for the XBL gold account, the player gets access games with servers situated in strategic area which are managed and fixed by Microsoft itself. While there are games that don't use such services, but for those who do, Microsoft actually guaranty the servers' up running and functionality with the XBL account data. For Sony, it's the other way around. Sony is bugging the developer/publisher if those doesn't get access to the right services, but they also take no responsibility if the servers have issues with their low-end PSN crappy services. They can even fine the companies if, for example, a service is interrupted for an extended time (whatever's the reason) because the to-be-fixed servers is bad for their console's image.

While it's true that Sony's PSN system require quite a big sercver (for all the players around), they're actually able to cover the annual cost with 1 month worth of its current yearly PS+ package (5$ per player).

You think that it's necessary for their PSN Store so that everyone can download all those Go of data? Actually, any games that aren't under the Indie special coverage cost money to the publisher to be shown in their PSN store. (It's not included with the vanilla license) That's without considering that Sony take (at least) 5% off all purchases made in the PSN store. (It's even worse than Paypal's 3% commission)

By the end, Sony only decided to charge since they had the option to. It got nothing to do with social features or connectivity or servers' costs which they already have covered for the next 20 years since the release of the PS4.