Dead Island caught the industry's imagination after the release of a stunning trailer, and the game's release has become a highly anticipated event. The game has been covered extensively in the gaming press, it features zombies, and people are excited to play it. So we were confused when it was announced that Square Enix would be distributing the game in North America. Deep Silver is the publisher of the game, so why did they need to bring in an outside company?

We reached out to Aubrey Norris, manager of marketing and PR for Deep Silver, to figure out why. The reason? It's hard out there for smaller publishers.

You need a certain amount of business to get into the stores

Square-Enix isn't just distributing the game, Norris told Ars. "Square-Enix will be primarily responsible for selling the product to retail, thus its role as our distributor, but we will also collaborate together on the North American-specific marketing plans for the game," she said.

The problem is that publishers need to do a minimum amount of business with retailers before they can distribute their own games. Deep Silver is a smaller publisher and this is one of its highest-profile releases to date; it just doesn't have the weight to position the game in an advantageous way. "In order for any publisher to be able to self-distribute, it has to reach a certain level of volume with retailers," Norris said. "Since retailers don't have time to work directly with every publisher, that's where distributors come into play, as they can assist smaller publishers with getting retail placement."

The bigger the distributor, the better the relationship with retail, and that can help publishers move on to distributing their own games. "The stronger the distributor a small publisher has, the better retail placement it can hope for, and thus higher sales, which can lead to eventual direct relationships if that's what the publisher desires," Norris explained. Product placement is important when you're in brick-and-mortar stores, and if you can get on an endcap or be part of a larger display, you have a significant advantage over the other games.

It's not only smaller publishers that need help with their games; Rock Band 2 was developed by Harmonix, published by MTV games, and distributed by EA. Notice a pattern? The largest, most powerful partner distributed the game, and helped to get the game into as many stores with as prominent placement as possible. This is even more important with a game like Rock Band, which was sold as a number of large, expensive bundles. Retailers, especially those with limited storage space, don't exactly fall in love with that sort of product.

As for the game itself, the buzz from the trailer drew in the press when it was shown at the Game Developers Conference, and that led to solid write-ups, which further helped to increase the hype. Don't worry, you'll see the game in action soon enough. "[Fans] are dying to see a gameplay trailer and we are almost ready to release one, so we can't wait for that, and from what they tell us neither can they!" Norris said. "Since the first game details surfaced after GDC previews, we've had steady growth in our community and are almost to 150,000 'likes' on Facebook."

All that buzz can peter out to nothing without strong support from retail channels, which is why Square Enix is working with Deep Silver to distribute and promote the game. This is an aspect of the gaming business that is rarely talked about, but it's still incredibly important.