Well this is pretty exciting. This opens up the door for PS4 games to be written in any language that uses LLVM as a backend, right? So in the future, PS4 games could be written in D, Rust, Ada, ActionScript...
Especially with the indie focus Sony has had, this could make it much much easier for people used to creating games with ActionScript to get their game on a console.
Is there something I'm missing? This seems too good.
Retail consoles only run code signed by Sony. When you become a licensed developer you get special consoles called devkits that can (among other things) run unsigned code.
Not only that but devkits also come with the SDKs and tools and access to the developer network. Plus they cost thousands of dollars. They also usually have double the specs of the retail console to run debug code and tools. Even USB connectivity and plugins for VS to debug code running on the devkit remotely.
Also on our Vita devkits there is no battery to make space for the extra ram.
Even with the open sourced compiler you're still missing most of the toolchain.
>> Not sure I follow - what is stopping non-licensed developers from developing and testing games on their own PS4s now that this has happened?
I don't want to come across as being mean or anything but...
How charmingly naive!!
Sony (and the other console makers, to be fair) go to absolutely incredible lengths to make sure that people absolutely do not get to run their own code on these machines. And then they sue anyone that finds a way to do so.
>Sony (and the other console makers, to be fair) go to absolutely incredible lengths to make sure that people absolutely do not get to run their own code on these machines. And then they sue anyone that finds a way to do so.
Also, to be fair, PS4 is the first Sony's home console that does not run user's code. All the previous Playstations had such an ability in one way or another:
I don't see a reason to buy a console unless it has a large number of exclusive titles that are worth playing. (Which in itself is anti-consumer. I want the games not the hardware)
PC gaming is currently the best choice. All the freedom combined with better hardware. The only disadvantage is the high cost of entry but you can easily save money by buying games during the big sales on steam.
Handhelds are a different story though. The games are often a lot better than mobile games.
Well....I have both a beefy gaming pc and a next-gen console. Yeah, my PC is more powerful and can run anything you throw at it. But most of the time I simply enjoy just sitting on the sofa with a controller in hand, one click the console is on(and it turns my TV and amp on as well), another click and the game is launching. The system is quiet and uses less energy - my £1200 gaming machine sure has an overclocked CPU and a custom cooling system,but it doesn't change the fact that it has a total of 7 fans and uses 400W while running games - I had it in my living room for a while but didn't enjoy the whiz of air. In fact, I bought Dragon Age Inquisition on PC to enjoy better graphics, but after the latest Nvidia Driver broke the game(huge FPS spikes, artifacts everywhere) I just bought a console version. Pop the disc in, go. No drivers, no config, it just works. Sure the graphics are slightly worse,but not enough for me to care. And the price of games was literally never an issue for me - just the lack of time to actually play them.
The retail versions of modern consoles enforce cryptographic signatures on everything, so nothing will run on them without going though MS/Sony/Nintendo first.
Officially licenced developers have special devkit systems with more lax security.
Sometimes fancy extra features too- I believe I've heard of (and seen photos of) devkit systems that interface to a PC for uploading code and/or debugging.
I have a PS4 devkit on my desk. Basically you develop in Visual Studio like you would normally, press run and the application gets deployed to the PS4 over lan - debugger also attaches remotely. So from the programmers point of view you don't even care that your code is running over the network. In fact, I have worked with Wii/WiiU/PS3/PS4/X360/XOne devkits and you can always deploy remotely through lan - with the only exception being the Wii, which used 3 USB cables at once for deployment and debugging.
That's pretty sweet! No wonder with the Wii, I understand it was the last holdout of the older group of consoles, what with the double-clocked GameCube CPU and all.
Don't think that Wii U is much better....it has a lan port, but literally every tool is command line based and their debugger looks like notepad from Windows 95 with few extra buttons tacked on. There is a plugin for Visual Studio integration, but it's super slow, when you hit a breakpoint in code it takes over a minute to trigger in the IDE, so everyone uses their horrible outdated debugger instead. Nintendo hardware is very weird to develop for.
I don't seem to have access to the VS plugin, but when I place a breakpoint in the Green Hills IDE it is indeed about 30 seconds for it to catch up. It works, but I do find it frustrating.
Especially with the indie focus Sony has had, this could make it much much easier for people used to creating games with ActionScript to get their game on a console.
Is there something I'm missing? This seems too good.