How Much $$ does Micorsoft want?

#1 You have to sign a contract with them. It's probably in the thousands of dollars range.

#2 Give them all the money. Sounds fair.

#3 I cant remember what I heard MBU was, but I'm pretty sure it was a fair chunk o' change.

#4 Make us remember the importance of an open plataform, and why it is so dangerous to sleep on the "comfortable" waters of DirectX

#5 If you're thinking of a disk release like you buy in the shops I heard they demand a huge sum just to look at it (like 50k) and can still tell you to get lost and keep the cash. They really want to keep total control over all Xbox content - same goes for Sony and PS3.

If you're thinking of downloadable games via Live, then check out XNA and the many hoops you'll have to jump through. And of course check out TorqueX
edit:dang typos!

#6 If you have a game ready / worthy of getting on the XBox 360 you don't need to worry about where the money will come from.

If you don't have a game ready / worthy of getting on the XBox then you don't need to worry about how much it will cost.

#7 Good philosophy Ben. Sadly is not enough for curious / masochist souls.

#8 I believe the devkits are in the 5k-10k range. I don't recall as I keep seeing notes about different consoles dropping the prices of their devkits, or potentially dropping them, etc. But that's the tiny cost. The massive cost comes when you go through your certifications to get your title distribution ready. Most of the developers that have released information on XBLA licensing do not recommend getting into the game unless you know your budget is at least in the 150k range. Box titles are more, I believe (few people talk about the cost of these since most indies don't get a chance to make a box title and the big companies aren't talking about the chunks of money that they're paying for certification). A good piece of information comes from the post-mortem of N+. According to the post-mortem:

Quote:
She particularly noted that, even taking the programming in-house, it costs about a minimum of $125,000 to develop an Xbox Live Arcade title, including many of the compulsory or necessary payments for localization, testing, and so on. She did note: "Pay yourself as much as you can" with regard to salaries - in case of title delays.

and

Quote:
As for how the game is funded, the Canadian duo managed to get Government funding from Telefilm for the game, with the duo explaining that it's a loan that's repaid out of profit. Sheppard then showed a full breakdown of N+'s costs - with $214,000 in total development dollars for the game.

Now, the XNA Community Channel may change the way people look at indie gaming on their consoles, or perhaps the world at large will not notice and we'll all get excited at having the possibility of having our games on an XBLA channel. It is definitely a much lower barrier of entry. Most of the comments have been rather clean and positive, though a few are comprable to the GameMaker comment scheme which sometimes goes the intellectual route of YouTube commentaries.

#9 To actually publish an on disc in stores game with microsoft you have to be a recognized publisher with them, there aren't too many, so you'd have to go through one of those publishers. X-box live is a whole different situation though