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Xbox 360 Game Patching Costs $40,000
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."
Yeah, so it costs Microsoft the equivalent of 1 year's pay for the average American worker to do some "testing" (?) which I'm sure is VERY thorough (>/sarcasm> it's probably not) then push these patches - which are usually quite small to begin with - to consoles where the HW requirements are KNOWN? If an Xbox can't fit the patch then it likely cannot fit the game. How hard is it to do a client-side space check and say "oops you don't have enough room." You know, like iOS and Android? And, oh no! I'm so sad that Microsoft will have to spend exactly $0.0001 to push a 5Mb patch over their massive pipes. There is simply no excuse for $40,000 patches. No argument in favor holds up to scrutiny. It's intentionally ripping off small devs - why would Microsoft want to help out their competition?