No doubt looking to enhance the appeal of releasing games through the PlayStation Network, Sony Computer Entertainment unveils a new royalty initiative for indepedent developers at their GDC panel on PSN self-publishing. Though the new "Pub Fund", Sony will guarantee royalties equal to the development budget of games published on the PSN so long as the software is exclusive to PlayStation platforms.

While Sony will also offer developers additional support in design and marketing for projects taking advantage of the Pub Fund, the console giant reassures that it's not a roundabout way of scoring exclusive IPs from budding developers. According to SCEA's development relations manager Chris Eden:

"A really important thing to point out is that this is not first-party publishing, this is not Sony buying your product. You'll be the publisher, you'll own the IP and you'll control your product. This is assisting you to make your next step from developer to publisher."

Developer Doublesix leads the Pub Fund charge with their recently released PSN title, Burn Zombie Burn. How many more indie developers will bite this new hook? Can it help ease the fact that publishers are required to foot their own bills for bandwidth usage covering their content downloads from the PSN Store?