Remember that NDA stands for "Non Disclosure Agreement". That agreement could say anything. If you sign the agreement, then you are bound to it (assuming the

Remember that NDA stands for "Non Disclosure Agreement". That agreement could say anything. If you sign the agreement, then you are bound to it (assuming the agreement is legal). If you don't sign the agreement, then you aren't bound by it. If you manage to get your API working on a console without needing any help from the console producer, then there is no reason to sign an NDA. However, in many countries reverse engineering (even for the purpose of interoperability) is illegal... So this means that you have no way of getting your API working on the console without signing the NDA. The companies lobbying to make copyright law the way it is know exactly what they are doing...