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A second-hand PS1 demo disk that I acquired had an advert for Net Yaroze, along with a little game made using the kit; as someone who had just started programmi

A second-hand PS1 demo disk that I acquired had an advert for Net Yaroze, along with a little game made using the kit; as someone who had just started programming at this point, it was an exciting concept. I was rather disappointed to discover that they were no longer even sold by that time! Nowadays, I have rather mixed feelings about dev-kits: on one hand, having dedicated debugging hardware is fun, but since truly cross-platform game engines became a reality in the 2010s, these machines have little purpose except to facilitate gatekeeping on the part of console manufacturers. Writing a little OpenGL, Vulkan or now WebGL and compiling with open source compilers for a variety of platforms seems infinitely more practical than signing secret contracts with officious console publishers.

mikepurvis 4y ago
To be fair, a big part of those cross platform engines becoming a reality was the other platform owners following Microsoft and standardizing console hardware on PC architecture. It wouldn't really have been practical to do that kind of thing in the PS2/GameCube era when you had them still inventing their own 3D pipelines and trying to differentiate on that.
capableweb 4y ago
If you want your game to end up on a PlayStation or Switch, you'll still need to link/integrate their closed-sourced SDKs, so we're close to the "everything is built with open source compilers" but not quite there yet.
Uvix 4y ago
Microsoft allows Xbox One/Series owners to enable Dev Mode on their consoles and run their own adhoc software on them. No secret contract allowed until you want to start selling your game.
- psychphysic 4y ago
  And up until recently you might even be able to run a closed beta and have people access your game on retail mode! Or well some emulators could be.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Except that UWP is deprecated, so they can at any time pull a Sony, and remove the support. It wouldn't be the first time, see XNA and XBox.
deleted 4y ago
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mikepurvis 4y ago

To be fair, a big part of those cross platform engines becoming a reality was the other platform owners following Microsoft and standardizing console hardware on PC architecture. It wouldn't really have been practical to do that kind of thing in the PS2/GameCube era when you had them still inventing their own 3D pipelines and trying to differentiate on that.

capableweb 4y ago

If you want your game to end up on a PlayStation or Switch, you'll still need to link/integrate their closed-sourced SDKs, so we're close to the "everything is built with open source compilers" but not quite there yet.

Uvix 4y ago

Microsoft allows Xbox One/Series owners to enable Dev Mode on their consoles and run their own adhoc software on them. No secret contract allowed until you want to start selling your game.

psychphysic 4y ago
And up until recently you might even be able to run a closed beta and have people access your game on retail mode! Or well some emulators could be.
pjmlp 4y ago
Except that UWP is deprecated, so they can at any time pull a Sony, and remove the support. It wouldn't be the first time, see XNA and XBox.

deleted 4y ago

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