Huh...

I get the impression that, like the BBFC, these ratings people make up a figure they think they can get away with rather than charging for the actual work involved. Does it really cost $2,500 to rate a game? Or even $800? Surely they just sit there and play the thing for a couple of hours and then go through a predefined tick-sheet, the sort of job you could pay anyone $20 an hour to do. Just seems like a tax on the creative industries to me.

agreed

it's like that little box you can hit while running 'round the board in monopoly - but in real life... ~luxury tax, $750~ (the rest, of course, going to the poor sap everyone blames when it's a disagreeable rating.)

the worst part

is they usually don't even play it, they sit through an extended directors cut of in-game footage made from the playing of the testers of the most extreme elements in the game. Seriously, I don't have a direct citing but I recall reading about it when all the Manhunt 2 Hoo-hah was going on. Sounds like publishing extortion to me, considering you can't release legit in chain stores without an esrb rating for consoles. It's all about money.

Mark is right

The ESRB doesn't play the games being rated. They are provided a disc with video of the most extreme parts of the under categories such as violence, blood + gore, sex, language and so on. A group of a few different "social groups" are made to watch this footage and give a rating, then ratings are collected and then looked over by a higher up in the company to pull them together in a happy medium, referring to the same disc of video shot for the final rating.