If I wanted to make an Xbox 360 Arcade game

#1 I hope you have some money....or a really good idea that a publisher could fund for you, because console dev kits are expensive.

If you are really serious about this I would contact some of the GG staff. They do have lots of information about this that could be discussed between the two (or more if there are more involved) of you.

Good luck

#2 Right now you have to go through an entity like Garage Games because the Live Arcade group is only 12 people and they don't quite have the infrastructure to handle hundreds or thousands of developers. That's what they said at IGC anyway.

They handed out a booklet and there was a track explaining how to do this. Someone must have put the video for it up. Indeed it is expensive too. I think a minimum of $30,000 ... but MS will front that ... if they like the title. However, that works against your royalties. You have to pay for localization and quality assurance ... or rather those are the two biggest things. I think that they'll give you the dev kit though if they like the title.

#3 Nevermind I didnt read carefully on that paragraph :P

But I hope GG can shine some more light on the matter... many people will be interested in this :)

#4 Check out the mega post on Xbox360 launch. It should be a few pages back...

#5 Where is this?

#6 XB360's will cost $150 AUD at EB! SWEET!

#7 This is pretty informative....so basically it once again comes down to putting together a decent demo.

#8 Not demo.... Game.

#9 Yeah, if you look at the current Xbox 360 Arcade titles ... they were already complete on the PC. When they got ported to the 360 ... they had to take them up a few notches over what they already were too.

#10 In a recent article, garage games stated that their fees for porting yout TSE project to 360 were $10,000.

So its definately not a small undertaking. Your better off making a good game for PC and Mac, making sure its a saleable product and building the capital to port to 360. Otherwise your taking a huge risk both time and financialy trying to create something unproven for 360, which may not be accepted, and has no guarantee of selling.

I'd make a successful computer game first with good gamepad controls, and mouse/keyboard alternatives. Get it out there and see just how much of a market there is for your game before getting ambitions for 360.

#11 $10,000 is an amazing price! Wow. That is very achievable and reasonable for any indie team that considers making a game for the XBOX 360!! For a team of 5 that $2000 apiece. That is $167 a month saved for a year. That's a great deal! Good to know it a possibility.

#12 Awsome advice guys...thanks.

I think I'll leave the Aracde up to the bigger money folks ;)

#13 Awsome advice guys...thanks.

I think I'll leave the Aracde up to the bigger money folks ;)

#14 That's a heck of a customer base.

#15 @Adrian - You've gotten a wrong impression from our stated prices. We are offering Torque Shader Engine for Xbox 360 for $10,000 per title. That does not include any additional technical support, training or porting. That is a licensing fee while TSE Xbox 360 is in development it will be $15,000 per title after it is out of beta. For a full Xbox 360 title $25,000 is the commercial price while the tech is under development.

We made Marble Blast Ultra with TSE and we were able to dev. on PC and build for 360 - a savings on dev. kits that could pay for the cost of the license.

@Mark - We agree with Adrian and recommend you build great games and find an audience on more easily accessable PC/Mac channels. Getting a game done and to a point of polish that it can find a fan base on any platform is a challenge, without a track record it will be difficult to show you can develop at the levels required to meet certification from MS, let alone that the game will have what it takes to make sell - so far we've seen Marble Blast, Orbz, ThinkTanks and Mutant Storm make it to Xbox and we've looked at a ton of titles.

#16 @Jay Moore
so what you are saying is buy the torque shader engine for the xbox 360 make your game on a powerful pc and when you or your team has enough money then buy the devlopment kit and the game should run on it because the torque shader engine for the xbox 360 will run on both pc and xbox360, right?

#17 Slight correction: Buy TSE (for the PC), make your game. When you get the interest/cash, grab TSE360.

Otherwise: yes.

That's exactly what we did on Marble Blast. We ran the same codebase on the 360 and on the PC, we did playtest sessions between PCs and 360s during development as well.

#18 Thanks.. that's what I shall do :)

#19 The response to Marble Blast Ultra has given GG new insight into the value that a quality game engine can deliver on the 360. We're going to continue to offer the extremely low price of $10k per title while TSE Xbox 360 is in beta, but after seeing the revenue potential on XBLA we're clear that the value proposition after completion is much higher. After we are out of beta (projected to happen in late summer / early fall) the XBLA price will be $25,000 which is well in line with the budgets and resources that are required to make XBLA games.

#20 The response to Marble Blast Ultra has given GG new insight into the value that a quality game engine can deliver on the 360. We're going to continue to offer the extremely low price of $10k per title while TSE Xbox 360 is in beta, but after seeing the revenue potential on XBLA we're clear that the value proposition after completion is much higher. After we are out of beta (projected to happen in late summer / early fall) the XBLA price will be $25,000 which is well in line with the budgets and resources that are required to make XBLA games.