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Greets Coders.

I have an important task to answer, so hope, you can help.
Suppose, a great company has the most modern official developing tools and perhaps the necessary engine for his games.
If porting a great GTA 3 or Assassins Creed -like game from the iPhone to Nintendo DSi:

1- How many members are needed?
2- And in what role?
3- How long will this project last?
4- What will be the most serious programming issues?

I don't have more info on it.
Really Many- many Thanx for any help or any suggestion where I should look it up.
Bye.

Port a game from iPhone to DSi? There's a serious gap, in terms of power and 3D capabilities. So you might end up in reducing a lot of figures at best, rewrite a lot of code at worst. :|

It depends on the particular project. While at Gameloft, we were porting an iPhone game to 3DS, and the standard team size for that was:

3 programmers (1 core engine, 1 gameplay, 1 tools and assets - although loosely defined roles because the type of work during the project varies)
3 artists (modeller, animator, UI artist - for adapting assets)
Producer, game designer (yes, game design will change!), sound designer, manual design (don't forget you must have a digital manual!) etc.
Plus testing team. I would budget for 12-15 people.

As for time, in our case we had the benefit of the source game using an engine that supported the target platform. In those circumstances, 3 months for the initial port, 2-3 months for cleanup/lot check/etc. Without engine support for the target platform, I would add another 3 months for the initial port.

Most serious issues will be asset issues (less memory), complying with lot check guidelines, potentially the stereoscopic rendering depending on how the engine is structured etc.

As for DSi... Best of luck :P I would estimate 9-11 months for that, though could be more or less... hard to know with so little information.