Marvelous: 3DS Budgets Much Higher Than DS

The potential costs of developing for Nintendo's 3DS handheld are surfacing in some estimates made by Japanese publisher Marvelous Entertainment, and for now it looks like they can end up a good deal more than the budget of a high-end DS title, and even above some console titles. Japanese blog Hachimaki picked up on an investor Q&A from the Harvest Moon publisher, wherein the company said it expects its 3DS development activities to cost between ¥70 million ($840,000) and ¥100-150 million ($1.2 to $1.8 million), depending on the game. The report compared this kind of budget to DS development costs in 2009, finding those costs ranged from, on average, ¥4.4 million ($53,000) on the low end and ¥44 million ($527,000) for a standard DS title. For Marvelous, Wii budgets are estimated at ¥2.0 million ($24,000) to ¥116 million ($1.4 million). PlayStation 3 games can range between an average ¥6.3 million ($75,000) and ¥250 million ($3 million), while Xbox 360 development for Marvelous averages a range of ¥3 million ($36,000) to ¥207 million ($2.5 million). Development costs at the beginning of a platform's lifecycle are generally much higher than later in it, once developers have become adept at maximizing the platform and its tools.