ARSTechnica on Game Development Costs
Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 9:21PM 
ARSTechnica has a really interesting article about game development costs. This article is from last year, but I'm just now stumbling upon it. Their piece (with image to the right) starts off by describing the Atari development costs for Pac-Man, a mere $100,000.
The article then moves on to Halo by Microsoft, which took 190 people and cost MS over $40 million. ArsTechnica's decision to contrast MS within this mix is quite interesting, as MS is about to change this world, quite drastically. Obviously the writers didn't know about this contrast when they wrote the article.
With the release of XNA for the x-box 360, Microsoft is inviting its world of game developers to start contributing. With an annual subscription of just $99, this .NET for the console is accessible to all of us interested in making a splash in the gaming world. Even if it is just a small splash.
The writer of this article has replied saying that he was aware of XNA when writing this article. My comment about him having not been aware was actually meant as a compliment to his timing. I believe Microsoft's release of XNA is going to create quite an interesting impact on the gaming community, shifting the odds' from a Halo based budget requirement to one where the world's developers can begin to contribute.
Thank-you for your response.
Reader Comments (1)
"Obviously the writers didn't know about this contrast when they wrote the article."
Um, there was a single writer--me--and I did know about XNA. In fact, you can read an article I wrote about XNA where I interviewed one of the developers on the Xbox team:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/mattlee.ars
Unfortunately, you will never see a game like Halo built with XNA, which was the point I was making in my development costs article.
Jeremy Reimer