Step by Step Guide to deplying a game to XBLA

#1 I don't believe there is a step-by-step guide available anywhere. It would be a pretty cool resource, though the cost/time of development will be a gross estimate depending on the size of the studio, technology, publisher contracts, experience of development staff, etc.

#2 Well what I was look for as far as time and cost is. The cost of the XBLA Creators Clubs Access. The cost for M$ to review your game. The cost for the ESRB rating if that is required. I was looking for the hard cost and the time it usually takes to get through those processes.

#3 I think one of the difficulties right now is that the Creator's Club is not a proven venue for commercial publication. While you can show off your work and gain publisher interest, it is not a direct point of contact that flows directly to XBLA.

Hopefully someone at GG or other XBLA developers (say, NinjaBee) can provide more context as I'm not sure about the process, either.

#4 If I remember correctly the ESRB cost is around $2000.00 when I checked into it a year and a half ago. Creator Club is $99.00 for a year and I think $49.00 for 4 months. Not sure on the others.

#5 Is ESRB mandatory?.... not to change the direction of this thread, I wonder if IA will have it required

#6 That is a good point Donald, I'm not sure if it is or not. I know retail outlets won't carry a game without an ESRB rating but I'm not sure about XBLA or IA. The ESRB process looked painful too, one of those "start a year before you plan on releasing" processes. But like I said that was a year and a half ago, may have changed by now.

#7 I need to know some of these in order to build a budget for my game. Is there a game that was developed and pushed to XBLA from this community other than Marble Blast? Maybe if I can hook up with them I can ask them these questions.

#8 There was a step by step guide in one of the Official Xbox Magazines. It will cost you thousands of dollars and months if not more than a year just to take a game you made to XBLA.

#9 Awesome! wait no that was the wrong response to that... Well I hope IA which is my primary target has a much shorter time frame.

#10 Donald,

In my opinion, you are worrying about a lot of things that you don't need to right now. Budgets for things like ESRB, etc. are very small compared to making a game good enough to get accepted by either XBLA or IA. If you do get accepted, these things will be well worth the investment.

For MBU we did not have to pay for the ESRB rating because Microsoft was the publisher. I can give you one small piece of advice. Don't call them M$. That will not help your case.

To be honest, your questions about Creator's Club, etc. come across as extremely naive, and would say that you really do need to concentrate on making your game first and worrying about the other things later. Are you a published developer now? Do you have any games on the market? I have seen a lot of your posts that talk about Serious Games. If your game idea is in that category, I can say with a lot of certainty that it will probably not be accepted onto either of those platforms.

Have you read my blog posts at www.makeitbigingames.com about getting your products onto XBLA and how high the bar has been raised?

Anyway, I know you were not asking these things, so in a more direct answer to what you are asking. XBLA game budgets are in the $250,000 - $500,000 range with proven, seasoned, experienced game development teams. ESRB used to cost around $2,000, but I have not checked lately. You will need to have outside Pre-Cert testing which will cost $10-15,000. It costs at least $10,000 to get your game Certified. If you fail Cert, it has to go back through Pre-cert and Certification again. Oh yeah, don't forget Internationalization. XBLA games used to ship in five languages, now it is more. Translation costs are in the $10-15,000 range. Oops, forgot development hardware. Back in the MBU days, it was roughly $5,000 per programmer, not counting hosting PC's. Not sure what it is now.

Hope this helps.

-Jeff Tunnell, GG

#11 ESRB rating is required, so is localization (E-FIGS + Japanese). MS supplies the localization services tho.

I just attended an XBLA session given by Jim Sink at MIGS earlier this week, he's one of the people who reviews games for XBLA. I got a lot of great info from him I'll be posting as part of my coverage next week.

In the meantime, you can learn more about XBLA development from my GDC summary - Xbox LIVE Arcade Game Development, which also includes a link to an even earlier session summary from my colleague Richard Fine.

#12 @Jeff
The question abuot Creators was not really a good one as I could have gone to the website to check it out. Also understood about the Microsoft shorthand. I don't have a published titles out yet. My background is in Sales/Marketing so that is why I am so concerned with the cost of things at the moment.

I was always curious as to how GG was working with Serious Games clients is all. As well as just interested in different business models and how they use GarageGames Technology.

I have read your blog and after meeting with my mentor and running the idea around Indie Game Conference here in Austin, I think that my game is not ready as it stands right now. And now after your post not so sure it will be ideal for IA either. I can only assume that your bar will be just as high. So right now for me its time to take another look at my design document and see where I can make it more unique, while at the same time cranking out some test iterations to actually see if its fun. I am sure I will send in a demo but just not right at this time ;) Thanks for taking the time to respond.

I could have sum this post up by saying I am a business man who likes and wants to make video games.