Xbox 360 Patching Costs $40,000
 

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 Shafer 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 - while talking with Hookshot. 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. More than that and potentially a game could become a big cash drain for an indi developer.

"I just wish there was more support, more marketing, more placement on the dashboard. It could have been our own little Sundance Film festival, a great sandbox for indie development," continued Shafer.

He also said that Microsoft should take some notes from Valve and its Steam platform: "Open systems like Steam, that allow us to set our own prices, that's where it's at, and doing it completely alone like Minecraft. That's where people are going."

Now that Mr Shafer has over a million and a half to play with he has more room to move and the potential for plenty of patches if his company's next game needs them - though it seems likely from the way he looks at the industry, that it wouldn't.


Read more: Xbox 360 Patching Costs $40,000 | ITProPortal.com

Its horrific that MS charges that much.

But if a developer rushes out an unfinished game, then ive got no sympathy whatsoever.

According to this it isn't just MS the £40k is between sony and MS
Making Games for Console Download Services is Too Expensive, Says Schafer - Xbox 360 News At Xbox360Achievements.org

Well then developers should take on board what beta testers say when finding problems, patches are something that games NEED and the cost is most likely from the time it takes to make the patch as appossed to what Microsoft and Sony charge.

It makes no sense that an improvement to a game is something that Microsoft or Sony would charge for, same with making DLC that a lot of developers are milking us for in those costs in the same way patches and DLC take time to make.

If a game needs a patch in most cases its because there are bugs with the game, take Oblivion and Skyrim as 2 fine examples however those are 2 very big games.

They charge for there testing of the patch

The only thing these 2 companies 'test' for is if the game is still playable, in some cases I know games in the past that have been made worse with some patches so these 'tests' are again most likely just to see if the game is playable.

Microsoft aren't known for their quality control, if anything this proves my theory that the reason behind patches taking longer on the PS3 is because Sony have a better quality control in place but thats just my theory.

In any case developers do make a lot of money from games especially when they are backed by the likes of EA and Activision.

What you mean like EA fixing the problems with Battlefield 3. Anyway the point is neither Sony or MS should be allowed to charge that much to a small company, maybe 20k between the 2 company's but to charge a total of 40k between the 2 is unfair, and we suffer for it.

How do 'we' suffer from it? There are small developers out there that have made some decent games take Croteam for example, based in Croatia a small team and have made the Serious Sam games which are awesome imo.

Developers need to stop taking digs at costs etc and make decent games, if it takes longer then so be it.
Diablo 3 is another proof of a great franchise that isnt milked and takes longer to come out with a sequel because they take their time making the game so when it comes out its near perfect.

In any case if developers find certain costs too high then they should start off small and make money then gradually climb the ladder, theres plenty of developers that started off small and have become very large example? Epic.

Like the article says there a glitch/bug in brutal legend and costums quest that they havn't bother patching, I'm not bashing the small developers but I am MS and Sony it's there charges which prevent these small independent developers from patching as they can't afford 40 odd k a time.
You say the developers should take there time but when a dev delay a game everyone moans, look at all the moaning about xcom being delayed, half the time people moan because of a delay and then in the same breath moan about a game being released with bugs.

Its true everyone moans when it comes to delays, I know I want Diablo 3 like yesterday but the developers are taking their time to polish the game.

We complain when too much DLC keeps coming out and its ripping us off but we still buy it, we moan where there isnt enough DLC and we moan when games arent that great well as gamers we moan a lot lol.

Thing is we still go out and buy the games.

Although I will agree its not right for Sony and Microsoft to charge for patches in the same way I think its obsurd for them to charge £10 licensing per disc, you would think that companies that made consoles would want the best support for their system but slapping these costs on top is rather silly imo.

If Sony turned around tomorrow and stopped charging for making games on their platform we all know what would happen, developers would start supporting Sony a lot more.

Microsoft with all their money dont like taking risks, dont like giving delelopers the support they need, look at RARE they were bought ONLY to spite Nintendo, Lionhead studios havent made a decent game since joining Microsoft...

xbox live indie patches are free, they wouldn't even afford to pay 10% of $40k nevermind the full amount.

I guess this explains why they never fixed Alone in the Dark, that had tons of things wrong with it that were supposed to me fixed via a patch but it never happened.

Maybe the cost of the patch but also the cost of creating the fix, if the studio doesn't see enough returns on the release then it's not worth putting more money into the game.

As an example, game costs $5mil to make and only makes $2mil back on release, there's no point in putting any further costs against the game as it's just creating more of a deficit, terrible for consumers but all part and parcel of games not holding their value beyond two weeks of release, something we consumers are benefitting from, swings and roundabouts I suppose

Speaking as a software developer, there is no way my company would fix a glitch in a game that didn't cause it to crash/become unplayable.

We released a minor patch about 6 months ago that took about 400hours in effort from reproducing, fixing, testing and releasing. The only time bugs get fixed are between releases, and games don't work like. So a sequel built on the same engine 'MAY' have a bug fix, but releasing a patch just to fix a minor bug is unlikely.

Microsoft as a company are actually very good at fixing even minor bugs, but that's because they value code quality highly despite the reputation they have.

this is absolutely rediculous so each patch is that costly im amazed recently with marvel vs capcom 3 they brought a stream of updates over the years that definitely mustve cost capcom alot