Developers looking to take a slice of the 3DS pie are going to have to open their chequebooks – Nintendo's new handheld is not going to be cheap to make games for.

Japanese blog Hachimaki revealed, as reported by1Up, that Harvest Moon developer Marvelous Entertainment told investors to expect an outlay of between ¥50 million and ¥150 million per 3DS title. That equates to around £375,000 to £1.1 million.

That's a sizeable leap up from DS costs. Nintendo's current handheld is relatively cheap to develop for. Last year Geimin reported that Japanese studios spend between ¥4.4 million and ¥43.9 million on a DS title. That's £33,000 to £330,000 on UK shores.

In comparison, PSP titles can soak up as much as £440,000.

These are ball park figures of course, but serve as a pretty good indicator that 3DS games are going to retail for more than your average DS title.

Find out for sure when Nintendo's new handheld launches in March next year. The machine itself will sell for ¥25,000 (around £190) in Japan. No UK or US price has been announced yet.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-11-19-3ds-dev-costs-triple-that-of-ds

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thats ALOTTA money

I think portable devs could benefit from perhaps making PSP2/3DS multiplat titles.....

That was obvious, though I want to know other than GTA CTW what game cost £330,000 to make on the DS... that's a bit excessive for your average DS title but CTW was a big game.

Let's just hope that isn't bad news for all of us.

Compare those prices to PS3 or X360 developing costs and you know why japanese publisher are almost the only ones making profits... Those are pocket money compared to HD console developing costs.

The FF games

DQIX

Layton with the CGI bits

?????

Geez, that is quite a step up.

They could still make cheap 2d games with some 3-d effects slapped in. Well, I hope they do this >_>...

well this is a problemwe will continue to see when tech comesbefore the cost of doing business

That and this shouldn't be news. We already knew the graphics would up the cost. Didn't Iwata say that the games would cost around Wii level?

Ok let's compare them.

Sniper Ghost Warrior was developed for around 250k Euros for pc and x360 version together.