What’s everyone’s take on the new consoles so far. I know they haven’t come out but what do you guys think? Personally I like Nintendo but from what I hear their development kit is 5000USD (no wonder not many development studios are getting it) and the PS4 is half that (2500USD) and the XboxOne is 500USD, again at least from what I read. Again I personally like Nintendo and Sony’s (PS3). And for anyone who has developed for any console, any experiences to share?
You heard wrong about Nintendo. Their devkit is $2500.
Thanks for the correction 
Well Like Morris said, it ranges from $2500 to much, much more.
The devkits make Unity3D-Pro price look cheap 
Unity. No 3D in the title.
I’m 99% sure that the Xbox one also has a dev kit, it is just that the console is also usable for small indies (Just like the Xbox 360) I dare say the Xbox devkit costs much more then $500.
Well, the website has it. To correct you, it would be Unity Pro, not Unity. Unity is the name of the free version ;).
You are correct in saying that the Xbox One console can act as a dev kit for indies, but what I’ve read says that this is available to all developers, not just the self-published ones, and that the Xbox Ones are the dev kits.
That makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, you don’t have a PC dev kit to develop software for a PC, and considering what’s on board this time around it’s hard to see the new games consoles as anything but PCs with custom OSes. What would be gained by making a second version of the hardware solely for development builds?
I think the idea (in the past) was to limit access to the console beyond consumer use (to prevent hacking/exploiting/etc). But since that was sooooo effective in prevent those things, you are right, there really isn’t anything to be gained by keeping them separate.
I read not long ago, and I apologize I can’t find the article, but Nintendo is/or was offering payment options on dev kits to indies. To be more specific, they we’re offering to take the cost of the dev kit directly out of your sales without any down payment up front,
Edit: based on your annual revenue I would imagine.
Nintendo give away lots of devkits.
We’re going to try and get a Nintendo kit later in the year or early next year.
to licence a full on game with dlc and all on almostr all cones it ranges from 10k to 100k thats what iv hered i might be wrong though
I’m pretty sure that in the past it was because RAM was extremely limited, games wanted to use all of the RAM on the device for their release build, but debug and development builds required additional RAM past that used by the release builds. So for that purpose a second version of the hardware with more RAM (and possibly other storage for stuff like logging, and other things to help developers) was available so that those builds could do their thing. But I could be wrong, that might not have been the main point.
You have to wonder if these rather pricy dev-kit costs are meant to keep away the lower budget developers?
So their thinking is… “hey if you got $2500 to send on a dev kit, you’re probably a ‘decent’ developer.”
I think it had to be the money. I remember one company of ill-repute, Data Design Interactive, putting out a lot of kid-targeted, clone Wii titles that infuriated many developers and consumers alike.
You have to go through the whole application to become a developer before you get a dev kit though. And to fill out those questions you need to have a company and a secure location etc. I think it is more to put a high value on the the kits, so that places will take care of them and keep them safe.
True, wouldn’t want those dev kits loose nor any thing about them leaked and such.
I don’t know about Microsoft or SONY but Nintendo dropped that “condition”. You don’t have to have a company-building or an big office. They acknowledged that most Indies are working at home and thought: “If we want to be indie-friendly, we can’t force them to get an office”