Fewer, not less! Ahhh!

Anyway, that article bodes well for DS.

How is Xbox so much more expensive to develop for, though? Maybe it is because the PS2 is more well established, which means people already have code bases to work off of.

I guess it could also be that Xbox can display far better graphics, which means more money must be spent on the art department.

But double the cost? Zany.

Well, it's in Japan they are talking about. The Xbox just never did well over there, for several reasons. MS really screwed up, though they are off to a much better start with the X360 having already signed some big name Japanese developers to make games exclusively for the X360. Plus, several of those are RPGs, which is still a huge property over there (one of the aforementioned reasons the Xbox failed there).

“Fewer, not less! Ahhh!”

Meh... go correct the “10 items or less” signs in the supermarket.

“Well, it's in Japan they are talking about. The Xbox just never did well over there[.]”

The lack of success shouldn't factor into the cost of development, just whether the game will be viable at all. Maybe the costs caused the lack of success rather than vice versa.

Nah, the lack of success was due to things like the release date of the Xbox, the lack of RPGs, the lack of certain Japanese developers developing games for it, the late release of Xbox Live at a time when online capabilities for consoles was huge over there, etc.

It could be the costs relate to original games vs. ports. I believe the Xbox is very easy to port games from one system to another, but harder to design for. I know that the Xbox360 has been designed to alleviate a lot of those problems and from what I've read from Developers is much easier to program for than the PS3.

You are also forgetting the obvious: the Xbox was made by Americans, not fellow Japanese citizens. Don't underestimate that factor.

I think maybe a factor in this study might be the variety of games and the game audience. Nintendo DS was listed as the lowest. This is largely because piles and piles of very cheap games have come out for the DS in Japan. Nobody would make a dictionary game for Xbox - and how expensive do you think a dictionary game would be to create?

Similarly, small companies have made piles of cheap games for PS2 / GC. Why would they target the Xbox when nobody in Japan owns one?

If you were making a cheap PC game to sell online for $9.99 at download.com, you probably wouldn't even bother with a Linux version.

I bet PC would have the lowest AVERAGE development cost out of anything, simply because of the sheer number of low budget games that have been made. I'm talking about totalling up every game you can find, all the $1, $10, or $20 games. There are a lot of them.

It would be interesting to see what games and companies were included in this survey.