Insomniac Games, responsible for creating hits like Ratchet & Clank, Sunset Overdrive and Resistance has announced their new game, Song of the Deep. The game will be published by Gamestop, in what Insomniac calls a “non-traditional developer-publisher relationship.”
As it stands, Gamestop will not be influencing the game’s development other than handling the marketing and promotional materials for the game. Insomniac has also stated that although Song of the Deep will be a digital title, the physical copies of the game can only be found at Gamestop retail stores across the United States. There is currently no word on if this will cross to the sister companies in other regions such as EBGames in Canada and Austrailia.
Ted Price, founder of Insomniac Games stated: “Insomniac owns the intellectual property. We have full creative control over what the game is and how it’s being developed, and GameStop has been incredibly collaborative and supportive of everything we’re doing,”
Beyond this, Gamestop will exclusively handle merchandise such as POP Vinyls, toys and other Song of the Deep related merchandise in order to market the game. The Executive Vice President and Senior Marketing of Gamestop, Mark Stanley stated, “We have 62 million customers coming to our doors every year. How do we give more and more content and more exclusives and different kinds of games in our store, beyond just the traditional AAA, etc? We’ve worked for many years with publishers on exclusives in our stores, etc. This is a different way to bring added value to those customers. We think it’s a very good balance to maintain.”
Song of the Deep will launch for the Xbox One, Playstation 4 and PC in Q2 2016.
