Coming on the heels of my previous piece about Sony's dubious new pricing policy for downloadable PS3 content, news contained in a press release from the company offers me some hope that the company is still quite serious about attracting and retaining a healthy stable of third party developers. It seems that Sony has released a new version of its Reference Tool at a lower price of $2,000.  Accompanying this news is the promise of enhanced developer support and continued optimization of the "SNC" compiler, which is included in the PS3 SDK.  This is the second time since the PS3's launch that Sony has made a move like this to appeal to developers, with the first having occurred in 2007.  That  round of changes saw a halving in price of the Reference Tool to $10,250, which puts into perspective just how affordable this new version is.

Just in case I've force fed you more jargon than you care for in a single sitting, please allow me to clarify a bit.  The Reference Tool is a piece of hardware that looks like a PS3 (or, "shares the same form factor", as Sony puts it) but that allows for the running and testing of code during various stages of development.  The SDK (Software Development Kit), on the other hand, is a package of software containing libraries and tools for the convenience of game developers.  Finally, a compiler (the "SNC" compiler, in this case) is a program that turns the code programmers write into machine code which is read by the PS3.  When you're playing Killzone 2, it is this machine code is that your system is executing.  This is all pretty cool, right?  No?  Well, just read on then.

After giving the specifics, Sony concludes the press release with this optimistic blurb:

"With more and more new and exciting PS3 titles scheduled for release this year [2009] from third party developers and publishers as well as from SCE Worldwide Studios, SCEI will deploy various measures to further reinforce game development for PS3 and will continue to expand the platform to offer attractive interactive entertainment experiences only available on PS3."

Vespasian:  Sounds great!   While you're at it, I've got another idea for you.  Why not try come up with something analagous to Microsoft's XNA Creators Club and XBL Community Games?  This could allow enthusiasts and small development groups to write games for potential release on PSN.  I'm currently involved in an XNA project, so I can personally vouch for just how cool it is to see your own code running on a console.  Skeptics might point out that Microsoft's possession of an accessible programming language (C#) as well as a development environment (XNA Game Studio, which is a variant of the venerable Visual Studio) give it significant advantages in this area that Sony lacks.  However, I happen to know for a fact that Blu-ray players run a species of Java called BD-J, that Sun has in the past promoted Java as a games platform, and that there are a variety of development environments available for writing Java code.  So, Sony, why not put all the pieces together?

Written by :

Vespasian

 

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