Developing for the XBox and Gamecube?

An Anonymous Coward asks this timely question: "My first impression when seeing the new consoles was: Hey, the GPUs in those things alone are more expensive than the whole thing! Thinking some cool demos/ports (SDL on the XBox???) might show, I started to search the net for developer info. The XBox appears that it could easily run any Win32/DirectX program, however the executables appear to have to be signed by Microsoft (many other devices that requite programs to be signed often accept developer keys, where either the programs are locked to one machine, or a warning is shown before they are executed. I wonder if this will occur)... The GameCube on the other hand, is described by many and on Nintendo's overview as being extremely easy to develop for. I start to drool when I see the legendary PPC/ATI combination, but have found no developer information at all. Anyone have experience with either of these? (Also,I assume other OSs could easily run on the XBox, but a loader must be written, and somehow signed first.)" Which of the later generation consoles (PS2 included) would be easiest for a hobbiest to start developing for?

Comments

Hacking

[JMZero]

Avoiding hackers seems to pretty much be stated goal for all 3 of these platforms.

Their logic makes sense. On a platform like the PS one, piracy was rampant. Even if a game checked for the CD somehow, the game binary could be edited to skip the check. With signed binaries, this becomes 4 steps more difficult for the hacker, and saves the developer the work of doing counter-piracy themselves.

To get a sense of how persistent hackers are (and how they're dealt with), check out the article on Gamasutra about the anti-piracy work in Spyro for PS one.

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011017/dodd_ 01 .htm (login may be required, I don't remember)