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This so much. Both the PS4 and Xbox One are a trip back to the crusty 80s video tape recorder. The aesthetic design of the previous console generation was much more elegant in my opinion.

Where's the signup page to become a PS3 minis developer? This press release mentions "SCEA Third Party Relations", but all I get when I visit the URL in the press release is "YOU ARE NOT AUTHORISED TO ACCESS THIS SITE".

with an extra license they have PS3/PSN support available

I was under the impression that Unity for PS3/PSN required two extra licenses: one from the Unity developers and another from Sony Computer Entertainment. Under what terms does Sony make this extra license available? I've checked periodically over the past ten months, and SCEA's developer signup page is still down.

Excuse me, but there is an indie scene even on PS3.

The web site to sign up for PS3 development, linked from this press release, has been down for nine months.

And you left out tablets, which will have a huge indie scene if not already. And what is limited about PCs and phones?

Have you ever tried to key in a phone number on your iPhone or Android phone without looking at its display? If so, how often did you get it right on the first try? The iPhone, the iPad, Android phones, and Android tablets rely exclusively on touch input. In a game that uses multitouch to emulate a gamepad, the player has no way to feel over which of the on-screen buttons his thumbs rest. There exists a device called the iControlPad, but almost nobody owns one, and it's far too expensive to bundle with a copy of a game.

As for PCs, the limitation is the average size of the monitor to which a PC is connected. PC gamers are traditionally unwilling to connect a large monitor and two to four gamepads to a PC. CronoCloud has told me repeatedly that if I develop and self-publish a PC game designed for use with a large monitor and two to four gamepads, it will sell fewer than one dozen copies.

I admit that I was extrapolating from Nintendo's qualifications document (on warioworld.com) because I couldn't find any qualifications document on Sony's web site. This Sony press release mentions a web site that has been unavailable for over seven months.

So now I know not to try to play head-to-head games at home anymore, sticking to games where we both finish the session happy.

Thank you for the insight that local multiplayer can allow for stronger group cohesion in a cooperative game.

My PS3 is brilliant. I can play games on it AND plug in a USB Stick/Drive and watch my downloaded TV/Movies.

But can you play anything homemade? I'd look up Sony's qualifications for licensed development of indie games for PS3, but the web site in question has been down for nearly four months. (I found this link in a Sony press release and have been checking occasionally since April 10.) Or if not for the PS3, then for which platform should indie co-op split-screen games be developed?

I tried for a while to get my Fiancee to [play some PC MMORPG] with me, but the other PC is in another room

Consensus is that gaming PCs can be easily moved from room to room. Perhaps some people are used to having laptops or small-form-factor desktop PCs designed for easy transport to and from a LAN party.

This is where consoles with capability for more than one controller come in.

And, ideally, where PCs with capability for more than one controller come in. PCs since about 1999 have had USB ports that allow for four gamepads and more. And TVs made since about 2006 have had inputs to show PC video: VGA ports for VGA video and HDMI ports for DVI-D video. So why don't people make use of that?

They are one machine, plugged into one TV with 2-4 input devices.

As are home theater PCs. But consensus is that home theater PCs don't exist. Consensus is that PCs can't be moved from room to room. Yes, this means the consensus is self-contradictory: people are willing to move a PC for a LAN party but not move it next to a TV.

Why make a game that 2 people will share, when you can try to make one that each has to buy individually?

David Wong, columnist for Cracked, agrees with you. But Slashdot consensus is that PC games are so much cheaper than PS3 games that it's just as cheap for a player to buy two copies of a $30 PC game that doesn't support split-screen as it is to buy one copy of a $60 PS3 game that does support split-screen.

2) Must be complicated enough to interest a pro-gamer, but simple enough for a casual.

Sounds like Super Mario Galaxy for Wii: player 1 controls Mario and player 2 shoots candy at the enemies to get them to stop.

Don't include Xbox 360 / Windows Phone 7 in your mobile application plans?

I mean... you're missing out on, what, two users?

If not for Xbox 360, then for which set-top device should one develop? Nintendo blanket refuses all home-based businesses, and Sony's signup page has been down for two and a half months straight.

Funny, my PS3's DPad works just fine.

An Xbox 360 controller works out of the box on most PCs. As I understand it, a PS3 controller needs a special driver, and according to this article (found via Google ps3 windows 64-bit), your PC has to be connected to the Internet every time you plug in the controller. If you were referring to the use of a PS3 controller with a PS3 console to play PS3 games, I'll address that after Sony's TPR web site comes back online.

BTW, Microsoft responded to that letter with the pro controller.

I've read articles claiming that Microsoft was making a pro controller, but I never ended up seeing any pro controllers in Walmart. Nor do any of the top ten results from Google xbox 360 pro controller appear relevant.

Thankfully it seems we are getting a resurgence of the "shareware" era, this time via steam and the download channels of the xbox360 and ps3.

Xbox 360 I'll grant you because it has Xbox Live Indie Games. But where is the form to sign up for SCEA's PLAYSTATION 3 developer program? http://www.tpr.scea.com, the developer relations site that this press release cites, hasn't been responding for over a month now.

Think they are talking about the developers who only do games not available on media.

You're right. Since the incident, new developers haven't even been able to sign up for PS3 devkits. A press release advertising SCEA's programs for developers mentions a web site for signing up that has been down for at least the past month.

I'd look up information about developing for Sony handhelds, but http://www.tpr.scea.com/ has been down for three weeks.

Between this and PSN, I'm starting to get the feeling that Sony has actually packed up and left the planet with all the money from Sony customers, leaving behind only an AI that issues random press releases to give them time to make a getaway...

Developing for anything Apple is more expensive than any other platform.

False. Developing for Nintendo handhelds is more expensive than developing for Apple handhelds. For one thing, just to be considered, you have to have a dedicated secure office separate from your home and a previous commercial title on another platform (according to warioworld.com). I'd look up information about developing for Sony handhelds, but http://www.tpr.scea.com/ has been down for three weeks.

And I wont get into all the added hoops that Apple development entails - like paying $99 to join the Developer Network just to be able to put your own app on your own device?!?

And I wont get into all the added hoops that Microsoft development entails - like paying $99 to join App Hub just to be able to put your own app on your own Windows Phone 7 or Xbox 360 device?!?

PSN has Indie games too, they are called 'minis'

"Minis" appears to be PSN's counterpart to Xbox Live Arcade, not Live Indie Games. I'd look closer, but SCEA's site to sign up for PSP and PS3 game development (linked from the press release) has been down for over a week now, and I have trouble determining the organizational requirements to get started.

Who, exactly, do they think is going to use this besides amateurs and little tools companies (like the ones linked to in the article) who cater to amateurs...?

Sony (PS3 SDK). Epic (Unreal Engine 3). Nvidia (FX Composer). AGEIA (physics).

XML provides more than just a way of serialising a tree into text - I've not looked into the details very far, but what I've seen is that COLLADA uses XML Schema for validation, URIs for references between different locations (e.g. defining a piece of geometry, then adding several instances of it into a scene definition - and then changing it into an external URI if you don't want everything in the same file, or if you want to point to binary data instead of more XML, and having the standard XML tools deal with that correctly), and you can stick custom bits of XML into certain extension points (which standard tools can't parse but can pass along unchanged for later tools). You could do all that without XML, but the designers decided it would be more successful if they did use it.

If your artists can export a model from 3ds Max, load it into FX Composer and tweak the shaders to make it look good, load it into a physics simulator to make sure it reacts sensibly, then have it converted into the optimised native format for whatever engine you're using - and if you're no longer constrained in choice of tools (maybe you want to change from Max to Maya, or support a modding community with Blender, or load assets from your last game into your new engine) because they all support the same standard format, and you don't have to write all the code yourself - then it seems like it can have a practical benefit. I'm sure it doesn't work perfectly in practice, and it's not going to give groundbreaking improvements to the game development process, but it appears to go a long way in the right direction and it looks like it's gaining some real support.

It does support skinning - I've actually just finished writing a converter from COLLADA into a custom format for a game (since COLLADA is not suited (nor designed) as a final format for distribution to users; it's for interchange between development tools where efficiency isn't so critical), and that handles skeletal animations using the standard features with no need for extensions. There are importers/exporters here for Max and Maya, here for Blender, elsewhere for others. It's also the native format for Google SketchUp / Google Earth models. The list here has Ogre and Unreal Engine as supporting it too, and it's a "Standard part of the PS3 toolchain" (source (PDF)) - so it is being used for real in games.

To be specific, Feeling Software's exporters (ColladaMax, ColladaMaya) and their COLLADA manipulation library (FCollada) are under the MIT licence. The development process isn't particularly open (their Bugzilla is, but their code repository isn't and you have to just wait until the next official release to get any new fixes), but that hasn't been a problem for me in practice - I've had to make some local changes to get FCollada compiling on Linux, but it's easy to do that and to distribute patches since it's open source.

An alternative to FCollada is the COLLADA DOM library, under the SCEA Shared Source License, which is similarly open.

"Odds are that game devs will have a hard time finding something for a sizeable portion those extra SPEs to do."

Well, that was the most inane thing anyone has posted in this thread.

Post less, read more.

Here's something simple enough for you to understand :

http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC 05/index.html

Then move on to the STI Cell patents.

Then ask us game engineers if it's ok for you start posting in console threads again.

The beer googles were on.. and drugs were being passed around the office for free that morning.. pity few actually read about the Cell which IBM has provided quite a bit of info for ages (over 6months old now):
http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/
Along with Sonys webby:
http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC 05/index.html

I guess slashdot modders find it hard to google these days..

After reading the article, this is a typical Anadtech 'nothing' article, even the one they did previously on the Cell was horrible, and so full of incorrect 'guesses' that they make themselves look insanely stupid.

If they had talked to _anyone_ working on the Cell they would have pointed them to this nice article, which I wish people would read before crapping on about the Cell:
http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC 05/index.html
This isnt some marketing junk, it actually has some pretty decent info about how the Cell _works_. Unlike what everyone has been saying, the SPE's ARE general purpose processors:
http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC 05/17.html

I wish people would stop with the "everyone chooses the Xenon because its more general purpose", what a load of. The Xenon has issues.. one being they dont have many pressed yet!!! The Cell _has_ been tested in various forms, as a Linux Server:
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20050 525/105050/
As a Linux Workstation:
http://www.linuxtag.org/typo3site/freecongress-det ails.html?&L=1&talkid=156
As a TV mpeg-2 stream decoder:
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20050 425/104149/?ST=english

The last one alone shows just how much data can be operated on .. and only 6 SPE's were being used for it.

Personally I think Anadtech should stop taking drugs.. and read around a bit.. maybe they might be able to be a bit more thorough with their articles then - youd think google was broken looking at the crap they are putting up.

After reading the article, this is a typical Anadtech 'nothing' article, even the one they did previously on the Cell was horrible, and so full of incorrect 'guesses' that they make themselves look insanely stupid.

If they had talked to _anyone_ working on the Cell they would have pointed them to this nice article, which I wish people would read before crapping on about the Cell:
http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC 05/index.html
This isnt some marketing junk, it actually has some pretty decent info about how the Cell _works_. Unlike what everyone has been saying, the SPE's ARE general purpose processors:
http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC 05/17.html

I wish people would stop with the "everyone chooses the Xenon because its more general purpose", what a load of. The Xenon has issues.. one being they dont have many pressed yet!!! The Cell _has_ been tested in various forms, as a Linux Server:
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20050 525/105050/
As a Linux Workstation:
http://www.linuxtag.org/typo3site/freecongress-det ails.html?&L=1&talkid=156
As a TV mpeg-2 stream decoder:
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20050 425/104149/?ST=english

The last one alone shows just how much data can be operated on .. and only 6 SPE's were being used for it.

Personally I think Anadtech should stop taking drugs.. and read around a bit.. maybe they might be able to be a bit more thorough with their articles then - youd think google was broken looking at the crap they are putting up.

No shit. 2-issue and in-order requires hand tuned coding. Yes there is a whollop for a "cache miss" (fetching out to main mem) on the SPE's of the Cell processor. But there are ways to code around that. Split the local store up into smaller chunks and fetch data to fill the smaller chunks while the SPE plugs away on the chunks filled with data. That's why the SPE has TWO pipes. One pipe is for memory loads, the other pipe is for data processing.

http://www-306.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/t echdocs/E815CC047A60914687256FC000734156/$file/ISS CC-07.4-Cell_SPU.PDF

http://research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC05/1 5.html

http://research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC05/1 6.html

If you don't split up the local store, you're going to incurr a 500 cycle penalty while waiting for memory. If you split up the local store, you can fetch to half the mem and process on the other half. This amortizes, if not completely masks the cost of main memory access.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

It's up to the developer to optimize their code and ensure that it is being scheduled properly.

I'd love to hear from a developer that is actually doing everything they can at the low level to optimize data flow. What's their experience with keeping the processors fed with data?

No shit. 2-issue and in-order requires hand tuned coding. Yes there is a whollop for a "cache miss" (fetching out to main mem) on the SPE's of the Cell processor. But there are ways to code around that. Split the local store up into smaller chunks and fetch data to fill the smaller chunks while the SPE plugs away on the chunks filled with data. That's why the SPE has TWO pipes. One pipe is for memory loads, the other pipe is for data processing.

http://www-306.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/t echdocs/E815CC047A60914687256FC000734156/$file/ISS CC-07.4-Cell_SPU.PDF

http://research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC05/1 5.html

http://research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC05/1 6.html

If you don't split up the local store, you're going to incurr a 500 cycle penalty while waiting for memory. If you split up the local store, you can fetch to half the mem and process on the other half. This amortizes, if not completely masks the cost of main memory access.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

It's up to the developer to optimize their code and ensure that it is being scheduled properly.

I'd love to hear from a developer that is actually doing everything they can at the low level to optimize data flow. What's their experience with keeping the processors fed with data?

Try 9 cores. Yes, its a Cell. And yes the SPE's _are_ general purpose cores - read some more if youd like: http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC 05/index.html

The last part about programming architecture.. is interesting reading. From job queuing.. to micro kernels to streaming.. multi-cores are are a very good way to do things. And on Cell.. they are all seperate cores.. And for a server with 14 of these in one box.. coming soon..
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20050 525/105050/

Its pretty obvious why Intel and AMD are going multicore.. because it works.. and they have to catch up before they are lost in the dust.

Many of the comments on this article leave the distinct impression that the writers have not bothered to learn anything about the beast on their own, and are either reading between the lines of the original press release, or blindly accepting whatever they find in one or more response threads. For those who care about getting their facts at least a little straight, there's a link in the "Related Links" slashbox that points at a number of IBM articles on various aspects of the hardware architecture of Cell: http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/ . With a little more digging on Google, you can find the following presentation slides shown by some Sony engineers: http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC 05/index.html/ which includes a presentation on programming models for the Cell SPEs.

Maybe you dont get it, because its a different way to handle data and code. Try reading a bit about the Cell before making all sorts of incorrect assertions. Heres a link to help:
http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC 05/index.html

Make certain you read about the _various_ uses of the SPE's and the huge number or programming models you can use to drive the Cell..

To answer you question - these are insanely fast data crunching servers.. geee.. thats almost any server.. nugget..

Actually, from SCEI's slides, it looks like the parallization of the CELL is done mostly in hardware. The PPE sets up a job queue, and the SPEs pop jobs off the queue...

So the most likely method of running Linux on such a beast would be to code everything for the SPE's and have the kernel itself running on the PPE.

See slides starting at http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC 05/26.html

Linux? Sure. The "PPE" portion of the Cell is a POWER64, which Linux already runs on. The "SPE" engines are effectively going to need their own kind of OS to manage them, but you could start with a mostly-user-space API and move it into the Linux kernel after people have figured out what that OS should really look like. This is all new stuff.

Looking at the CELL architecture overview, though, the Cell doesn't look to me like a desktop replacement. It looks like a video card replacement. Think about it: the biggest piece of closed-source, proprietary hardware in your PC right now is your video card, with its sekrit interfaces and binary-only drivers. We're already starting to see a movement towards more general-purpose use of that hardware with things like nVidia's Cg toolkit. The CELL is the logical next step in that direction. You'll have a video card that runs Linux (or, ideally, a video card that acts as just another (heterogeneous) processor in your system).

Looking at the server's root page (with the PSP user agent):

http://ingame.scea.com/index.html

Lists not only the wipeout folder, but also three icons:

http://ingame.scea.com/icons/folder.gif
http://ingame.scea.com/icons/back.gif
http://ingame.scea.com/icons/blank.gif

Interesting this page uses HTML 3.2 Final (including the H1 tags!) while the wipeout page uses HTML 4.01 Transitional.

So there you go.

Looking at the server's root page (with the PSP user agent):

http://ingame.scea.com/index.html

Lists not only the wipeout folder, but also three icons:

http://ingame.scea.com/icons/folder.gif
http://ingame.scea.com/icons/back.gif
http://ingame.scea.com/icons/blank.gif

Interesting this page uses HTML 3.2 Final (including the H1 tags!) while the wipeout page uses HTML 4.01 Transitional.

So there you go.

Looking at the server's root page (with the PSP user agent):

http://ingame.scea.com/index.html

Lists not only the wipeout folder, but also three icons:

http://ingame.scea.com/icons/folder.gif
http://ingame.scea.com/icons/back.gif
http://ingame.scea.com/icons/blank.gif

Interesting this page uses HTML 3.2 Final (including the H1 tags!) while the wipeout page uses HTML 4.01 Transitional.

So there you go.

John Funge (author) and Craig Reynolds (reviewer) have worked together on multiple occasions , so this article should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Craig is indeed a popular figure in the field, but I'm very disapointed that he doesn't mention this fact.

I think you're talking about what is now known as the SCE-RT. This is the patent.

For more info, look at the other docs on SCEA's R&D site and SCEE Technology Group's site.

For more info, look at the other docs on SCEA's R&D site and SCEE Technology Group's site.

I used this book as one of the references for my Game Developer Conference course on "Faster Math Functions", and the book is good but has holes. Crenshaw's style shows his crusty old engineer roots at times - his coverage of Mininax polynomials is way behind the times and he seriously needs to get into Mathematica or Maple as his basic high-precision tool.
Work by Tang on combatting destructive cancellation in range reduction, the new semi-table based exponant and log methods, Intel's research into using Estrin's Method based SIMD for evaluating polynomials or Muller's book on Elementary Functions are beyond Crenshaw's experience, and it shows. This is a homebrew book rather than an introduction to the state of the art. More information at SCEA R&D Website.

Even worse, consoles, which have the larger market, don't have enough storage (except maybe for the XBox) and aren't open enough to encourage players to create their own games and share them."

Thats not entirely true. Sony does have the Linux kit, with the purpose of being mostly open and encouraging players to create their own games... but unfortunately not open enough to share them with your non-linux-ps2-ing friends.. Still, some respect for Sony is deserved here.

"Isn't this the SAME Sony that is pushing "copy protected" CD look-a-likes in an effort to eliminate your fair use rights? And you purchase their products? Doesn't that just tell them that what they're doing is OK?

Or is that Sony an evil twin from the mirror universe?"

It is. It's got the real Sony locked in a basement porting linux and netbsd.

That's the difference between Good and Evil.

The register ran this months ago. Sony has not chosen to say anything yet about this actually happening. It makes slashdot's choice of having a The Media topic instead of, say, journalism a bit ironic. Oh, well.

• Sports: Madden
  
• RPG: Final Fantasy
  
• Driving Sim: Gran Turismo
  
• Fighting: Tekken
  

And now, we are in the midst of an ultimate gaming revolution with titles like Ico, Grand Theft Auto 3, NBA Street,Devil May Cry, and SSX Tricky available. PS2 games seem to be at their peak, but according to Playstation magazine, no one has harnessed the full power of the ps2 as of yet.

It was published this month (in playstation magazine) that Sony has introduced a resource usage program thingy which gauges how much of the ps2's power is being used. It was first thought that Gran Turismo 3 maxed out the ps2's power but this new tool from Sony only showed 25% of the ps2's power was being harnessed. Say what?!!? It was written that Sony will be providing this optimization tool to third party developers.

The best is yet to come people.

I would be impressed if Sony is making $100 profit on each PS2 unit sold. If we assume a 40% retail markup and that Sony is doing the wholesaling (i.e. no middleman between Sony and the retailer), then Sony has a revenue of $179.97 on each unit. (My sole retail experience was in a different sector, so the retail markup on consumer electronics might be lower, which makes things easier for Sony.) With $100 profit, that would mean that the manufacturing cost is right at $80 per unit. Spreding the $2B cost of the fabrication facilities over 100M units (your numbers from a few posts up) gives $20 from each unit going to cover the facilities, leaving $60 per unit to cover raw materials, wages, and other design costs. It might be possible, but I don't think so. But they should be able to cover their costs with $160 per unit.

Found this .pdf. As of 2001/9/30, PSX total sales are 88.25M units, PS2 19.57M units; PSX software 802M units, PS2 72.5M units. So it looks like there are 9 games sold for each PSX, and 3.7 games sold per PS2...but the PS2 also plays PSX games. That'll make things harder to track. The game division is claiming a $34M operating income in the quarter that ended 2001/9/30, but that's different from a profit. With 4.62M PS2 units shipped in that quarter, $100 profit per would be $462M. Drat, now I've got to figure out where those numbers should fall on a balance sheet.

Anyway, I agree with you that the PS2 is probably profitable, although I doubt the $100 per unit figure. I apoligize for mis-remembering what position you were taking in the discussion, and losing track of your thesis. Take care.

Chris Beckenbach

Aw, man - that's a pretty shitty state of affairs. But I suppose it does graphically illustrate why developing products based on licenced properties is generally a Bad Thing (or at least something to be done with extreme care) for any game developer. (Being someone who has been bitten by having a licence holder suddenly refuse to let us release our finished game because of Sony's attitude to all things not Playstation 2).

The specs for the PS2 list the screen resolution as variable from 256x244 to 1280x1024. A far cry from being limited to 480i.

Yeah, right. Microsoft will put those other tiny companies right out of business. Which would be bad because, you know, Sony would never try to be a huge control-freak media monopoly.

By the way, where did you hear that Microsoft isn't getting royalties from third-party Xbox games? Or is that just your own conspiracy theory?

Right, let's get this straight, from what I've heard it is a fairly complete linux system. It's basically a port of an oldish redhat distro. It installs on the hard disk that comes with the kit (40GB) so has a reasonable /tmp, which it needs, don't forget that this is a machine with only 32mb or ram. Swap city. Having said that it apparently runs pretty well and is more than capable of running your browser (also included in the kit is a broadband adaptor), word processor etc. Resolution is limited to 800x600 though.

Sony have a page with a couple of screenshots and a features list here

Which brings us to why Sony are doing it. Yes they have got a touch of microsoft envy, they like the idea of having one unit which does DVD, games, web, interactive content and office stuff sat under your telly that is made by them. But, this is open source not m$ so don't get too upset. More than that though Sony most likely want to encourage the return of the bedroom game coder.

Think about it, they've done this before with the netYarouze project (ps one that you could connect to your pc and download code to) and they're providing the system manuals with the linux kit. Forget porting linux games, this is a games console! There's no way you'll get decent performance through mesa et al on ps2, the drivers won't be optimised for it, don't forget, it's not a PC (remember 32mb main ram, 4mb VRAM!). You're supposed to be adventurous, learn how the ps2 works, see if all those developers are right about it being hard to code for, take up the challenge.

If you do it right ps2 is an awesome machine, you just have to remember what your target platform is (hint dynamic texture management). Sony are giving people the opportunity to get back to the good old days and make games at home, go on, you know you want to!

Even if it is highly graphical one. Because

• LSB architecture.(If you develop on x86 machine, it is great help)
• SDL supports PS2. It works very well.
• SCEA does good job.

On the other hand, there are some problems.

• Framebuffer is RGB, not BGR.
• Math library is very slow.(double pricision floating point number is operated on software)

If you have an interest, see our product, EffecTV, a realtime video effect processor. It runs on PS2Linux with USB camera(WebCamPlus). You can find some hacks for PS2Linux in CVS tree or file archives, and a shot.

Kentarou Fukuchi

BTW, the Linux kit specs here for the Japanese PS2 comes with a 10/100 ethernet connection. I would assume that the US version comes with this also.

1. You need to sign an NDA to get a full developer kit and all the hardware details.

2. The consumer version of the PS2 is only capable of booting disks produced by Sony and will not boot a CDR.

3. To load up your own code, a development system is required, which is expensive

4. PS2 programming requires good knowledge of the hardware, writing code for multiprocessor machines and experience programming "close to the metal" (dealing with DMA...etc). It's not hard to write code for, but if you've never done any of the stuff I just mentioned before, it can take a bit of getting used to.

Assuming you can get around these hurdles somehow, as previous people have mentioned, writing a good game on ANY platform is not a small undertaking if you've never done it before. A typical commercial game takes 18 months to two years to create, and often has quite a large team of people doing it. On top of that, people (including those grading your project) are pretty used to professional quality games these days, which is a tough yardstick to be measured against. Something that is not a game might be a better choice

All this being said, the situation could change. If you read this old Slashdot article you will see that there is a PS2 Linux kit available in Japan and that Sony is at least considering releasing it in the US. The web site mentioned in that article is still open, so if you haven't registered your interest yet, go do it!

So if you want to see Linux on PS2 outside Japan, do your share and register here for European version or here for American version. And remember, this is only to see if there's interest, so the registrations don't commit either side to anything.

SDL is nice, but I'd like to avoid getting a devkit via the grey market. SCEA has a poll going to gauge interest in the PS2. Let's get this thing released! --me