Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Xbox 360 Game Patching Costs $40,000

Posted by Soulskill on from the does-not-come-with-a-free-car dept.

hypnosec writes "It costs developers a total of $40,000 to release a single patch on Xbox Live, making it a difficult platform for smaller developers to grow on. This revelation was made by Tim Schafer of Double Fine Studios — which recently drew a lot of charitable donations as part of a campaign to create a contemporary point and click game. He went on to say that this is just too high a fee for smaller developers to pay, making it hard for them to do well on the platform. This makes sense, since requiring just one patch could massively cut into the profits for a company."

6 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Get it right the first time by LostCluster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Patches are not cheap to deploy, you've got to bother your customers and pay for bandwidth. It makes a whole lot more sense to put the effort into getting the right code onto the disc before it ships.

    1. Re:Get it right the first time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's odd, since they're pretty cheap to deploy on the PC.

    2. Re:Get it right the first time by jeffmeden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Patches are not cheap to deploy, you've got to bother your customers and pay for bandwidth. It makes a whole lot more sense to put the effort into getting the right code onto the disc before it ships.

      Epic first post. I was going to suggest that he not think of it as a "Patching Fee", he should instead consider it a "Don't fuck up" fee... It does sound exorbitant, but that's life in the big city.

    3. Re:Get it right the first time by wolrahnaes · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In this case the patches also have to go through the console's usual certification process which obviously involves Microsoft or Sony employees spending time on it. Also remember that until the current generation of consoles, games were expected to work right out of the box and not need patching. Obviously that didn't always happen, as anyone who's used cheat devices like Gameshark can attest to some big sellers had many revisions over the years and games like Morrowind on Xbox had game-breaking bugs which required re-buying the "Game of the Year" edition to fix, but the idea is that console games should not be treated like PC titles where launch-day patches are almost expected.

      I'm not defending the exact numbers, $40,000 does seem rather high, but between actually charging for the certification work, CDN space, and bandwidth used plus adding a "try to get it right the first time" charge it might not be unreasonable.

      --
      I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
    4. Re:Get it right the first time by Moryath · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hell, in this generation the consoles THEMSELVES are "ship now, patch later" bullshit... Xbox360, PS3, Wii, all of them constantly need "updates." And rarely do they ever improve functionality.

    5. Re:Get it right the first time by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If only Microsoft had had the foresight to collect fees from the gamers using their Xbox 360 console. You might think of it as a subscription, even, and you might even give them silly names like Gold or Silver. They could use it to support the infrastructure, that way silly $40,000 fines on developers wouldn't exist. It'd be a stable source of income that could keep data centers up and running.

      Ah, if only they had thought to do it. I guess it makes sense why they resort to these sorts of fines instead.