I really appreciate a guide that takes you through the process, giving me a chance to understand all of the steps, before sharing the pre-packaged solution at the bottom.
I was a little surprised by the cost as well. At the rate that I'm gaming these days it would be like $10-20 per month, that's pretty damn good (price of games not included obviously).
When I see the 50 cent an hour price, I think of the old days when I'd pay 25 cents for one play of Pac-Man.
Say you allocate another 50 cents an hour for software then you are getting to a $20 or $40 a month spend which is getting in the range of a good video game habit. This leg could support sales of an AAA product and also could probably fund AA games.
Get your configuration right and you have a system for multiplayer games with pretty low latency behind the servers -- even if the video gets screwed up, the games will always stay in sync.
It is no way an accident that the costs wind up like that because everybody else is thinking about "Can I replace $X spent on hardware with $Y a hour spend in EC2."
I was a little surprised by the cost as well. At the rate that I'm gaming these days it would be like $10-20 per month, that's pretty damn good (price of games not included obviously).