WTB: Complete Development Kit for unspecified console for academic purpose

Hi,

I'm on the lookout for a complete development kit for teaching. The platform is more or less irrelevant but preferably PS2, Xbox or later.

The important part is that it includes everything needed for development (PSU, cables etc)

PM or reply to thread.

/aladinsane

 

If it honestly is for teaching, have you tried contacting the companies directly?

 

Of course, but Nintendo, for instance, does not have an academic program (and we don't meet the application requirements) and a PS3 Development kit is way way beyond our means :shrug: - hence this inquiry.

We just need a real development kit in order to show/teach the difference between desktop game development and console development.

 

What budget are you looking at?

 

I'm not quite sure as I haven't cleared it with my boss yet. But I think I can find something like 100-300£ in the budget - depending on the date and quality of the kit.

Is that even possible? Or are we better off sticking with XNA for XBox (which we have access to) and eventually a bit of homebrew?

 

My advice would be to stick with XNA. You won't get anything much more than a testing unit for that budget. If you want to demonstrate something that is modern and relevant to your students, XNA will probably be more valuable.

edit: if that's £300 rather than €300 you might be able to find a PS2 TOOL, but be prepared for endless headaches getting it up and working for what is now very outdated hardware.

 

You've also got the legality issue. I'm sure your institution wouldn't want unlicensed machines / software being run, and teaching kids that it's OK!

Stick with what you can get hold of. XNA is fine, or you could look at iOS / Android development. Anything else isn't going to be within your budget - and as you mentioned, you may well not qualify for the development programme.

 

dont bother if you work for a university mate, if any of the higher ups find out you are using Unlicensed equipment you will be in a lot of trouble, first of all everything in a university has to be logged into the asset stores, this is due to them having to account for all equipment, its purchase date etc. when the university does an audit, they would want to know where the equipment came from and who you purchased it from, if any of this looked in any way dodgy (and getting it from the grey market/black market is dodgy in their book) then the shit would hit the fan

PS ^ the above is from experience

 

Nintendo doesn't have an academic programme? Then how did a few unis in the UK manage to get official licensed SN Systems GC dev kits and allow the students to use them (as long as they sign a nintendo NDA which stops them talking about it)

 

agreed, my old uni had plenty of PSX developments kits from sony, fully licensed obviously

 

It would seem odd that they don't have some sort of academic programme (especially after their involvement with Learning Without Frontiers, but perhaps it was a case where the institution didn't qualify - perhaps it's a college for 16-18 year olds rather than a university, for example.

*EDIT*

http://www.warioworld.com/apply/

It could be the security issue.

Incidentally...

 

From Nintendo's reply to my inquiry:

"Thank you for your interest in developing for Nintendo Wii and DS. Unfortunately, we do not have an academic developers program at this point in time."

Sony have an academic program, but they don't seem to keen on helping out. I've tried to get through with my request for a month now (actually only an inquiry about the academic program). I even got a formal introduction to one of the persons in the program. However no reply yet...

I do agree, what I shouldn't even be considering grey market stuff, but I have a bunch of CS students begging to learn more about 'real' console development - maybe I have to get one for my self, and lend it to the department...

 

Search for the unis in the UK with the kits and ask them how they got them, I know the NDA the people sign (yes it IS a university) goes direct to nintendo, but the kit and all software is sn systems stuff

 

SN Systems is a Sony company now. Maybe they had a different policy back when they supported Nintendo products?

Looking at their products page, they direct people to contact Sony if you are interested in getting any of their stuff.

 

I would have commented on this earlier if I had seen it, but you should look into XNA, both on the PC and Xbox. I have taught several game design classes using it, and while it is nice to be able to give students the opportunity to work with something unique in a controlled environment (e.g. a Wii development kit in a controlled lab space), it is actually more practical to give them something that they can work with on their own.

XNA is one of those thiings that you can do 90% of the development work on an off-the-shelf PC, with the remaining 10% on the target platform. Many students interested in game design will most likely have an Xbox for playing games that they can use to develop games on as well (Dreamspark is free for students and comes with an XNA subscription). Plus, universities don't like working with gray-market materials.