Hello... I was wondering if anyone knows the price of the development kits for the 3 main consoles out right now (ps3, wii, 360) and if there are also any other fees a developer would have to pay to develop and release a game for each system. i have found Wii Development Kit system Price: 1800 Any License fee's? xbox: I've found many different from thousands to $99 for and express, no exact numbers or any licensing fees sony ps3 found that it costs 17.6 million per game!!! and the development kit is 20,000 Not sure how much is true.. if anyone has any more true facts thanks. Just for curiosity

You should probably just get a hold of the respective companies and ask them. They will be able to give you the exact amount. If I remember correctly, I read that dev-kit prices for Xbox 360 and PS3 are handled under NDA so nobody here can actually tell you without breaking contract. Just call Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony and ask them how much the dev-kits are. They'll either tell you or put you into whatever process they have for licensing kits to people.

The $99 for 'express' on the 360 is a year subscription for XNA to run games created with the XNA kit on your retail 360. It isn't a fee for a development kit.

XNA FAQ here

Quote: Original post by jmoore2020

sony ps3

found that it costs 17.6 million per game!!!
and the development kit is 20,000

17.6m for a PS3 game?

Where did you hear that?

They're not retail items, you can't just go out and buy them if you have the cash. You need to enter into a licensing agreement with the company, or into another sort of deal with another company who is already a licensed developer, depending on what, exactly, you want to do. The costs to you may vary depending on this deal.

This is involves calling the licensing departments of the companies and submitting an application of some sort to get the ball rolling. Note that you probably shouldn't even bother unless you're an actual, legally-formed company with actual legally-owned office space somewhere and actual legally-paid employees. They're interested in studios with track records.

If all you want to do is make games on some console, the $99/year XNA Creator's Club is probably your best option.

Quote: Original post by ArchangelMorph

Quote: Original post by jmoore2020

sony ps3

found that it costs 17.6 million per game!!!
and the development kit is 20,000

17.6m for a PS3 game?

Where did you hear that?

Yeah, that's rubbish. I doubt the devkit is as much as that, but I don't know for sure. You're close with the Wii devkit price, it's a bit more (I'm a Nintendo registered developer, but I can't tell you the exact price due to NDA's, etc).
When you buy a devkit, you usually get the SDK and support and everything included with it. However, to get any devkit legally, you need to be a registered developer, which means proving to Nintendo / Sony / Microsoft / whoever that you're a stable company caple of creating reasonable quality games.
As for the cost of releasing a game, Nintendo, etc will take a certain percentage or fixed amount for each title sold, you don't get charged by them for developing a game.

Why do you want to know? It's much easier to do stuff on the PC, or do homebrew stuff (Although the legality is questionable). XNA is a reasonable option for XBox, but there isn't really any equivalent (yet) for Wii or PS3.

Quote: Original post by Evil Steve

Quote: Original post by ArchangelMorph

Quote: Original post by jmoore2020

sony ps3

found that it costs 17.6 million per game!!!
and the development kit is 20,000

17.6m for a PS3 game?

Where did you hear that?

Yeah, that's rubbish. I doubt the devkit is as much as that, but I don't know for sure. You're close with the Wii devkit price, it's a bit more (I'm a Nintendo registered developer, but I can't tell you the exact price due to NDA's, etc).
When you buy a devkit, you usually get the SDK and support and everything included with it. However, to get any devkit legally, you need to be a registered developer, which means proving to Nintendo / Sony / Microsoft / whoever that you're a stable company caple of creating reasonable quality games.
As for the cost of releasing a game, Nintendo, etc will take a certain percentage or fixed amount for each title sold, you don't get charged by them for developing a game.

Why do you want to know? It's much easier to do stuff on the PC, or do homebrew stuff (Although the legality is questionable). XNA is a reasonable option for XBox, but there isn't really any equivalent (yet) for Wii or PS3.

I agree with most of what you said abotu developing on the PC/XNA/homebrew but i've gotta disagree with your assessment of the costs of devkits.

£20,000 for a PS3 sounds about right, meaning that I can't tell you what we paid at the company I worked for which had 8 of them but £20k "sounds right" :| Especially for the early dev versions. The Wii is something of an exception in that the kits are much cheaper for Nintendo to produce anyway.

We got burgled about 8 months ago at my current place and they stole our Xbox360 devkit, the police simply don't take that kind of thing seriously until you tell them how much the devkits are worth compared to the retails ones at which point its like someone stole the crown jewels :D

Andy

That is pretty crazy that the PS3 dev kits cost so much. I am a registered Nintendo Developer as well and everything Evil Steve said sounds right to me as far as the Nintendo side of things go. I didn't think the Xbox 360 dev kits were more than a few grand, either.

One important thing to remember would be that you're not paying for the hardware so much as you are paying them for the priveledge of developing for their platform. While the 17mil sounds high, from what I've heard from others, the dev kits can be quite high.

The kits do not cost 17 million dollars. The total cost of developing an entire "AAA" multiplatform, multilingual game release might be that much, when you include every possibly thing you can include (kits, licensing deals, paying everybody down to the coffee guys and caters for the ship party...) but not the kits alone. That's a lot of money.