Yeah, its a somewhat unfortunate reality that if you want to get full access to the consoles, you need to be an actual gamedev and sign some contracts. Microsof

Yeah, its a somewhat unfortunate reality that if you want to get full access to the consoles, you need to be an actual gamedev and sign some contracts. Microsoft does not suffer poor fools just trying to learn how to get the most out of the Xbox. Sony is much the same in this regard, and nevermind Nintendo. I do wish they made Xbox more available to students in gamedev/cs degrees. When I was in school, Microsoft actually sponsored the program I was in, and I had a chance to work on Xbox stuff that as a student I would not have had any access to otherwise; That ended up being really useful to my early career -- not a lot of college grads have experience with developing and publishing for real on Xbox.