Which consoles were the easiest to program for?

Which consoles before 32-bit era were the easiest to program for? For example, have a SDK with great tools, support for programming languages developers at the time enjoyed working with, good documentation etc etc. Are there any consoles that stood out against others?

 

I don't think that any console pre 32-bit was easy to program for, most if not all of them used assembly language specific to their hardware and they weren't powerful enough to use high level languages like say C natively without a huge unreasonable hit in performance. in fact, use of high level languages didn't become commonplace because of hardware bottlenecks until the 128 bit era.

Ease of development would have coincided with experience for the platform, which would help with good documentation. Such documentation didn't really arrive until the mid 1980s, before that, it was mostly based on experimentation and trial and error. Whole companies like Activision were created through trial and error experience. The best devs of the time were often self taught.

I think SDKs didn't become commonplace until the 32 bit era, when hardware was complex enough to make use of them. before that, systems would be mostly debugged hardware wise, with maybe only spare code libraries (if any) included on floppy disk along with a compiler for the target platform.

In keeping with the idea that more experience = ease of programming, I think of the various platforms the following would probably be the "easiest":

1st gen: Magnavox Odyssey (really the only "programmable" console of that gen)
2nd Gen : ColecoVision (very liberal hardware at the time)
3rd Gen : Master System (common Z80 CPU plus much documentation)
4th Gen : Genesis/Megadrive (68k CPU was very familiar to arcade developers/game devs in general)
5th Gen : Sony Playstation (much documentation, easy libraries, hardware was very copacetic)
6th Gen : Microsoft Xbox (native directx support, plus massive support from MS meant ease of porting)
7th Gen : Xbox 360 (same reasons as Xbox)
8th Gen : Ouya, because of its nature as an open source console.

 

Dreamcast was very easy to develop for, right?

 

Depended on which route you went. Windows CE would have been dirt easy for direct x vets, but gave awful performance (predictable given its nature as a high level SDK) Using stuff like the Katana kit would have given much better results but often harder (uses direct C/C++ with its own libraries), and can use assembly for the best result (but obviously very hard)

I think the Dreamcast had the first full fledged SDK available. for its time it would have been the easiest of the 6th Gen until the Xbox came around. Sega partnered with MS to give them an advantage as the easiest platform to program for, as they took a lot of flack from 3rd party developers over how notoriously hard the Saturn was to develop over the Playstation (which Sega lost alot of devs over)

coincidentally, it was this partnership which taught MS that they could apply their software to the console industry and become a viable competitor.