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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."

3 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 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.