What’s a good estimate for how much it would cost to port PC title developed with Torque to the Xbox 360. Lets assume its a 30 hour RPG. What’s the minimum and maximum?

What’s a good estimate for how much it would cost to port PC title developed with Torque to the Xbox 360. Lets assume its a 30 hour RPG. What’s the minimum and maximum?

You don't provide enough information. Zero dollars minimum and many millions of dollars maximum.




If you want to not just port it, but to actually publish it, you are going to run several hundred thousand dollars just for Microsoft certifications and age ratings. You are likely going to spend a few million dollars in marketing, although technically that could be optional. Assuming it is a physical disc game, you'll likely need another several hundred thousands for distribution, and if you want to actually be in the big chain stores you'll need to make some deals to get shelf space, and those deals usually involve you paying money to the stores.

And you also have costs for the actual work of porting. This is probably the easiest to figure out: The rough equation for that part is (number of people) * (time) * (salary) at that location. The time and the number will vary based on your actual game and the difficulty of the port, and the salary depends entirely on your location.

Then you've got other costs, like the costs of your support staff, building facilities and utilities, computer hardware, computer software, legal costs, taxes, etc.


A major console game developed in the US these days ranges around $5M to $10M for development-related expenditures. There is generally at least that same amount, sometimes double and rarely triple that amount, in non-development costs. A recurring game like an annual sports franchise will be less because of reuse. A minor console game will be less because it can be scoped smaller. A major game developed in another nation will vary based on local salaries and other factors.

As for it being an article, there isn't really a need for it since this kind of question falls in the category of "If you have to ask then you can't afford it."

If you happen to have $15M+ lying around then chances are you understand how business works, or can hire people to do it for you. If instead you have enough experience and resources to be able to beg and borrow $15M+ from investors then you must necessarily have the business experience to already know or they wouldn't be foolish enough to lend the money.

The cost to get onto Xbox Live Arcade would be less than a retail disc but you'll still need at least five figures just to purchase devkits, and they don't hand those out easily - You'll have to have a good track record to even be considered. Most companies producing professional quality Arcade titles work with six or seven figure budgets and you still have to factor in MS Certification & ESRB approval.

If you're looking at Xbox Indie Games, that's much cheaper to get into, 99$/year for a license, but to my knowledge there isn't a version of Torque that will work with XNAGS 4.0, the only version allowed for new releases. Also, you'd be hard pressed to cram 30 hours of content into 150mb - the max file size allowed.

The cost to get onto Xbox Live Arcade would be less than a retail disc but you'll still need at least five figures just to purchase devkits, and they don't hand those out easily - You'll have to have a good track record to even be considered. Most companies producing professional quality Arcade titles work with six or seven figure budgets and you still have to factor in MS Certification & ESRB approval.

If you're looking at Xbox Indie Games, that's much cheaper to get into, 99$/year for a license, but to my knowledge there isn't a version of Torque that will work with XNAGS 4.0, the only version allowed for new releases. Also, you'd be hard pressed to cram 30 hours of content into 150mb - the max file size allowed.

MS Certification, dev kits and ESRB are covered. The dev kit for Live arcade is below 10K. I'm stumped on labor and anything else beyond that. As frob said labor is the easiest to figure but I I'm struggling on that because I dont know how long it would take X amount of people. The game is similar to Torchlight which was recently ported to the 360 though it has a lot more written dialog and its turnbased. Beyond that and the fact that its Torque I cant say much more about it. I'm wondering if anyone who has worked on a similar port and would know how much goes into such a port. My assumption is that you would have to multiply every in game hour by twenty not including combat which is kinda slow being TB. So maybe 18 hours times 20 with which ironically comes to 360. Thats just a shot in the dark.

Beyond that and the fact that its Torque I cant say much more about it. I'm wondering if anyone who has worked on a similar port and would know how much goes into such a port.

Yes, there are many business people who can answer that.

But that topic isn't for this forum, which is about community-applicable article proposals and requests. That topic is a post for the Business forum.



To save you some time, here's the answer you'd get in the business forum: You cannot post enough information to get a solid answer from the board. This is a core business competency that you are clearly missing. Hire somebody who has the experience in it and have them run the numbers. If you don't realize this, or have difficulty hiring them, consider that you might not be ready to enter the business world quite yet.

I apologize for putting this in the wrong forum. I'm not sure if the business forum would fit. It seems like this is more of a question about development than business? Upon further examination the real questions are how long it would take, the level of expertise and the amount of people. If I knew that I could run the numbers.

I apologize for putting this in the wrong forum. I'm not sure if the business forum would fit. It seems like this is more of a question about development than business? Upon further examination the real questions are how long it would take, the level of expertise and the amount of people. If I knew that I could run the numbers.

why do you think we could run the numbers if we don't know that information either?

why do you think we could run the numbers if we don't know that information either?

Excuse my ignorance. My assumption was that if someone was familiar with porting process then by describing the game as -

The game is similar to Torchlight which was recently ported to the 360 though it has a lot more written dialog and its turnbased. Beyond that and the fact that its Torque...

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it would be enough to come up with an estimated timeframe and level of expertise. With that I could run the numbers well enough.

Excuse my ignorance. My assumption was that if someone was familiar with porting process then by describing the game as -

The game is similar to Torchlight which was recently ported to the 360 though it has a lot more written dialog and its turnbased. Beyond that and the fact that its Torque...

it would be enough to come up with an estimated timeframe and level of expertise. With that I could run the numbers well enough.
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Well if you have 300 highly experienced developers it wouldn't take very long. If you have one guy fresh out of college who can only work part time, it will take a while.

You're going to have to hire a developer anyway, so make your first hire your lead and just make sure to hire someone who can make those estimates.

It seems like you are looking for a hard number of X amount of dollars and Y amount of time to do a port, those kinds of numbers don't exist. The cost breakdown of every game is different. If the code isn't written very well it will take much longer to port as it will need to be optimized for the limited 360 hardware. Do you want to hire $50/hour serious professional developers or $15/hour college kids? You get what you pay for. Without having access to your project frob's answer was about the best that can be given in this situation. Is nobody on the team that made the PC version able to give you any kind of estimates? They would certainly be in the best position to offer any numbers. If not, you need to hire a project manager to be able to get any kind of reasonable estimate.

If you want to know how much it cost to port Torchlight then you need to ask Runic Games. If another company was to make the port there would be a different final cost.