Q Games' Cuthbert: Cost Of Making New PS3 Themes Outweighs Profits

With a promotional theme for PixelJunk Monsters, Q Games is one of the first developers to showcase PlayStation 3's new Dynamic Themes, a system it helped create. The new themes add animation capability with firmware upgrade 3.0 -- but the developer says it's unlikely to earn any money producing the themes. Q Games says it's "proud" to have helped out with the development of the Dynamic Themes . "Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) wanted to spice up the background a bit and static pictures just didn’t cut the mustard," writes Q-Games head Dylan Cuthbert on the official PlayStation Blog. "So we collaborated with them to make a system where developers can display what they want and animate and move them around," he adds. "This definitely adds a little life to the PS3’s background so be sure to try it out." But in the comments of his post, Cuthbert responded to users who groused at paying $3 for a software theme, pointing out that the developer makes the theme itself at a loss. "Remember that we’ll be lucky to sell even a few thousand themes, and so the cost of developing the theme (3-4 weeks of coder/artist time, checking, testing etc) will still far exceed any money we make from it," Cuthbert wrote.