Double Fine’s Tim Schafer’s been pretty forthcoming lately, possibly because he’s swimming in all that Kickstarter money.
According to Schafer – the guy who brought you Full Throttle, Psychonauts and Brütal Legend – it costs a heck of a lot of money to patch a console game post-release.
In an interview with Hookshot, the grizzly-faced game designer says it costs $40 000 to release a patch on modern consoles – presumably the PS3 and Xbox 360.
"Those systems as great as they are, they’re still closed", Schafer said. "You have to jump through a lot of hoops, even for important stuff like patching and supporting your game. Those are things we really want to do, but we can’t do it on these systems. I mean, it costs $40,000 to put up a patch – we can’t afford that! Open systems like Steam, that allow us to set our own prices, that’s where it’s at, and doing it completely alone like Minecraft. That’s where people are going."
I can only assume that he factors in the cost of development and the use of human resources in that figure – because if not it’s a wonder that console games get patched at all. sure, 40K is but a trifle of the $20 million it costs to make the average AAA game these days, but you’d imagine that if it did cost such a sum, developers might be more inclined to y’know, release games that actually worked.
Last Updated: February 14, 2012