Is it possible that there will be more dev hardware pieces on the market when the next generation (x360, ps2 and rev) arrives? maybe somebody could tell if it was so when the last change happened
Just a guess, but if there was going to be a flood of hardware from current gen stuff, it would already have (and has to some extent thanks to interplay and acclaim going bust etc) happened. Most big companies are already working on the next gen stuff, but they'd probably keep at least some of their older hardware for the time being.
Unless more companies go bankrupt, you will see them either return the hardware (microsoft seems especially picky about this), or archive it. Odds are ps2 dev might go on for value software for another five years, so I would guess the great bulk would be archived for spares. You might see some on ebay due to employee theft, but if you consider it took ten years for saturn items to start showing, you should check back in 2010 or so.
According to Nintendo software houses are able to develop for the Revolution on Cube hardware, which makes sense since they are not switching CPU & GPU type. On the Nintendo side companies will be able to pertain their investment for quite some time. Sabre
I think the way we should interpret this is that since the CPU & GPU manufacturers remain the same for the Revolution (IBM & ATI), the architecture would be improved for the Revo but would inherit from the GC, so code could be easiliy ported from one machine to another. Like porting code from a Power PC G4 to a G5 if you were an apple developper. Meaning for the developper that the Gamecube development hardware is becoming more or less a beta kit for the Revolution, I presume that Nintendo has provided software houses a mean to adapt the new controller to the GC dev hardware and there you go, you are ready to code for Revolution. So then Nintendo has time to prepare the revolution dev kit. The reality might be harder than my writing, but I think it's a smart move from Nintendo, while M$ and Sony supporters are struggling with their costly & complicated new hardware. Current Nintendo developper can leverage their GC investment in the first place and develop games with the new controller without having the burden to learn a completely new platform. Only the new controller comes as a challenge. It could also mean that the first games could look like previous generation, but I trust Nintendo will make sure that doesn't happen. Sabre
also id guess that by being ableto develop for revo on gc, they wont have to fork out huge amount of money on new dev kits, so in theroy cutting dev costs but why did it take 10 years for saturn dev gear to appear ?
...when it took till 3 years ago for Dreamcast dev gear to (according to the date I first saw a DC Dev kit on eBay)?
The reason that saturn dev equpt took so long to show up is that too few american companies developed for it. The ones that did didn't start going out of business until recently. Once people started seeing that it would sell, they would get it from some of the devs that were still around, but not using the saturn dev kits.
