In its latest financial report, Harvest Moon publisher Marvelous forecasts that studios will have to fork over a substantial amount of moolah to develop for the 3DS – at least three times the cost of equally-sized DS efforts.

While conceding that “costs vary based on game content,” Marvelous told investors in a Q&A session that it has pegged the general cost of developing a 3DS title at around 50 million and 150 million yen ($600,000 – $1.8 million).

Comparatively, the reported average for a DS title in Japan fell between 4.4 million and 43.9 million yen ($53,000 – $527,000) last year. Clearly, the bar for entry is notably higher over the DS. Keep in mind that as Marvelous tends to focus on low to mid-budget efforts, we reckon that the likes of top-tier devs like Capcom are at the far end of that estimate – if not spending significantly more.

Are the days of shelling out $30-40 for a portable title numbered? With a rise in development expenditures, logic assumes that ROI could be maintained through higher software costs – something Nintendo remains mum on.

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