Why is it that X Brand makes a video game but Y Brand publishes it?

[Vivaldi]

Why is it that X Brand makes a video game but Y Brand publishes it?

[MrOracle]

Because Brand X often doesn't even have enough money to DEVELOP the game by themselves, much less publish and promote it, so they partner with a bigger company because that's the only way for them to be profitable. Unfortunately, the smaller original developer usually gets the crappy end of the deal, which is why so many of them eventually get absorbed by the bigger company.

[Vivaldi]

Developer : Brand X
Publisher : Brand Y

Brand Y is not involved in making the game. It is only publisher.

[Vivaldi]

It says Developed by Brand X and Published by Brand Y.

[MrOracle]

Right.

Imagine you had an engineering firm and you designed a car for Ford. You may have even built a prototype of the car. That's a difficult and complex job, but even when that job is completed, it still doesn't mean you can go to market (i. e., to car buyers) with it, because to do that, you have to be able to mass-produce the car (in a plant costing billions of dollars, plus being able to acquire all of the raw materials), and then you need to transact the sales, deliver the cars, and have a network in place to support them. Simply designing the car doesn't mean you can do any of those other things.

Likewise, many game developers are fairly small companies with relatively little revenue, and they don't put out enough product to have their own sales, distribution, and marketing departments, so they have to go to another company (almost always a much larger game developer that DOES have their own distribution) and partner with them to distribute your game.

[Vivaldi]

And a few years later, when Brand X gets big, Brand Y starts using a game engine Brand X made :D

[Vivaldi]

Brand X: ID Software

Brand Y: Apogee Software

[Vivaldi]

Such as Apogee Software's Blake of Stone games in 1993 and 1994 using ID Software's Wolf 3D engine in 1992.

[MrOracle]

It's a very old story. I could easily name half a dozen examples, but my favorite game series (Command & Conquer) was originally made and published by Westwood Studios. They soon needed distribution help, and partnered with EA, who eventually bought them and destroyed the franchise. Likewise, Condor Games (which was local to me) developed Diablo, which they partnered with Blizzard to publish, and soon Blizzard bought Condor and eventually fired all of the Condor staff, and now have effectively killed the franchise (and most of their other business). Same thing with another local company Mantis, who created SimCity. As I said, it's a very old story at this point.

[Vivaldi]

Man, even Wolf 3D was published by Y Brand when even its egine was made by X Brand.

Whats more Y Brand used the engine of X Brand made in its games after.

[Vivaldi]

You really see Y Brand as bigger and X Brand smaller when Y Brand even used the engine of X Brand in its games.

[Vivaldi]

Everthing including game engine belongs to X Brand and Y Brand even uses the engine of X Brand in its own games.

Being able to publish does not make Y Brand bigger when Y Brand even uses X Brand's game engine in its own games, does it?

[MrOracle]

I was around for the launch of Wolfenstein 3D for DOS, and all of the versions of Doom and Quake, plus the games like Heretic and Hexen that were developed with the Doom engine, so, yeah... I even have the newer Wolfenstein from around 2009 or so.

[Vivaldi]

Everything including the game engine belongs to ID Software for Wolf 3D but the publisher was Apogee Software.

Apagee Software, who was the publisher of Wolf 3D, used Wolf 3D engine in its own games like Blake of Stone games in 1993 and 1994.

[boggboss]

The skills to make a game are not the same at being able to publish and sell said game

[Twalli]

Marketing. Same reason why Pixar used to make movies for Disney to release them. Pixar makes better movies, but Disney markets movies better.