{"id":558,"date":"2013-02-15T16:36:31","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T20:36:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.payne.org\/?p=558"},"modified":"2013-02-15T16:36:31","modified_gmt":"2013-02-15T20:36:31","slug":"game-consoles-the-last-remaining-walled-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/game-consoles-the-last-remaining-walled-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Consoles: The Last Remaining Walled Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

The reddit user kmesithax<\/a> wrote a brilliant comment<\/a> yesterday about the realities of game console development, describing the tools and costs:<\/p>\n

Well, no, there is no OpenGL or any graphics API for that matter, it’s all some stupid low-level hardware API that you have to tickle to get any 3D rendering to work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and<\/p>\n

So let’s say you get over your initial API shock, you have a decent handle on what all the little libraries do, and you wanna buy some development hardware now. Well, uh, okay. That’ll be anywhere from $2,600 (leaked 3DS devkit figures) to $10,000 or more (leaked Xbox 360\/PS3 devkit figures).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This reminds me exactly<\/strong> of the pre-iPhone “walled garden” mobile app world, when you needed ~$10,000 for a development license for Qualcomm’s “BREW<\/a>“. \u00a0The original article \u00a0“The Minecraft Test<\/a>” (e.g. could your platform spawn the next Minecraft?<\/em>) is a fabulous way to think about platform openness. \u00a0(Also see Nate Brown’s post “Stupid, Stupid Xbox!!<\/a>” for an insider critique).<\/p>\n

The console platforms have completely<\/em> missed<\/em> the market transition to open, low-friction developer on-ramps, and it’s no surprise the console market is now anemic<\/a>. \u00a0In contrast, the new OUYA console<\/a> (I have one on pre-order) has a fledgling, but very open SDK<\/a>\u00a0and just had a “game jam<\/a>“. \u00a0The OUYA is under-powered relative to current consoles, but I bet the openness will more than make up for that issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The reddit user kmesithax wrote a brilliant comment yesterday about the realities of game console development, describing the tools and costs: Well, no, there is no OpenGL or any graphics API for that matter, it’s all some stupid low-level hardware … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}