How much does it cost to develop a MMOSG like Second Life?

Can someone give me a breakdown of estimated costs, including start-up fees, initial development, maintenance, web-hosting, servers, etc. etc.

How much does it cost to develop a MMOSG like Second Life?

Tens of millions of dollars. Developing a piece of software as complex as Second Life takes a few years. We%26#039;re talking about software with both server- and client-side applications capable of supporting several thousand simultaneous, real-time connections. And that%26#039;s just the technical aspect. You also need content.

You%26#039;re looking at a development team of 30-60 people at minimum for 2-4 years before you even go live. Employing people talented enough to pull off something like this is going to cost you, and cost you plenty.

Then there%26#039;s hardware. You%26#039;re going to need a pretty massive server farm plus an incredible amount of bandwidth - institutional grade. That could be up to a thousand dollars a month or more.

I wouldn%26#039;t try and do it with less than $25 million at the minimum.