From my experience "low-budget" equals about $150,000. Typical is more like $400,000-$500,000 and high end is a million or two. It also seems that the bulk of these costs are just staffing. Anyone utilizing a 3rd party engine has a lot of costs to absorb (like $40,000 - $1million) and I''d recommend estimating the cost (in time and money) to develop your own engine. And remember, there''s often a learning curve to 3rd party engines (like Lithtech).

Truly low costs games only seem to be possible on PC''s, but I believe there''s still a very much alive market for them. Some of us are just trying to make a living at this stuff, so it costs a lot.

Charles Galyon
CGalyon@NeoPong.com

Well, I dont know in which XBOX program you are but as you may already know there is 2 of em : the XBOX independant developer program and the XBOX incubator ones. It seems like you''re in the second one. MS is giving you 6 months to make a playable demo of your game and to secure a publisher for it. Not to make the entire game as in 6 Months you will not even be able to fully test it IMHO. And it is really not realistic to make a top level commercial XBOX game in 6 Months, and it is what MS or any XBOX publishers are looking for.

Okay now that we solved the Timeframe problem, lets check at the funding options you could have....

1st- If your game is really good and have kick ass graphics, gameplay, etc... you could aim for a Publishing/Funding deal with any XBOX publisher who could be interested (but if your timeframe is very short... you may better forget it..)

2nd- There is organization like Octagon and some other I know in the U.S that are specialized in funding campain and publisher dealing... that could help.

3rd- if you can fund the 6 months dev cycle of your demo yourself thats the best options of these 3... because even after 6 month you`re not even sure to have a publisher and even if you found one your game has to be accepted by MS before going anywhere...

A reasonable budget for a 6 months production demo with the people you are looking at varies between 250k and 1M$ depending on the salaries you are wishing to offer... Just a hint... dont pay too high at first (55k can is too much I think for a first game project). You can manage to have pretty good motivated people in your team for less than that a year (If you cant believe me I have names).

I hope that this message helped you a bit.


Btw... I will plug myself If you ever need a project manager I could be available to do so.

Thats it if you have any questions feel free to write me an email to : yinyan@oricom.ca use this one because I dont remember which one is in my profile again

Thanks.


"What is best for a Quote than this : BLANK"