Sixty Second Shooter Prime shows how cheaply you can get on Xbox One

How much does it cost to publish a game on Microsoft’s Xbox One console through the ID@Xbox program if you go as cheap as possible? Luckily for frugal game makers, Happion Laboratories, developer of Sixty Second Shooter Prime and Energy Hook, has posted a breakdown of the costs to bring a game to the Xbox One. Not counting the actual hours of his own work, indie developer Jamie Fristrom calculated the cost of the Xbox One port for Sixty Second Shooter Prime at around $5000. The largest expenses were for insurance and rating boards fees, both of which are required by Microsoft.

If you want to release in a given territory, you have to get your game rated by the official ratings boards of that territory. It’s sad but true, getting your game rated in some territories can be a lot more expensive than simply translating your game to that territory’s language! I spent about $700 on localization, all told, and spent nearly $2000 on getting my game rated by PEGI and USK. (I skipped Australia and New Zealand because they both wanted around $2K for their ratings boards…maybe I’ll launch in those territories later if the game seems to be selling particularly well.)

Fristrom noted that while the costs were much higher than publishing a game on the PC, it was worth it. He’s covered his costs and made a “living wage” as well. Sixty Second Shooter Prime is available on Xbox One. Sixty Second Shooter Deluxe is on PS Vita. There’s also a free version of the original Sixty Second Shooter available through Google Chrome.