I am in the planning phases of a project for myself, it is to be a single and multi-player card game. I would like to track statistics for each person such as world rankings etc...

My problem is I do not know the best approach for the client - server architecture and programming. My original goal was to program everything in C# as I want to get proficient in that language. My original idea was to have a back-end database and a back end server run on some sort of hosting on the internet, however that seems costly for such a small project that may or may not make any money.

I have tried looking into cloud services however I am unfamiliar with the technology, and I am not sure I can make them suit my needs, especially since most like Google's cloud wants you to use their coding architecture from what I understand.

Finally my last problem is that I would like an architecture that can be used for different languages so that I can port it from PC to IPhone, Xbox etc...

So does anyone have any advice on the best architecture and language to do this in?

Am I worrying about architecture and back-end costs to much and should just concentrate on getting the game running any which way?