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Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't the Xbox One allow you to use normal consoles as Dev kits, effectively making it free? http://www.polygon.com/2016/3/30/11318568/xbox-one-dev-kit

Can't find recent information on PS4 dev kit prices, but given the number of indie games I see on it nowadays (and receive for free with PS+), I imagine it's not unreasonable.

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The price is under NDA but I can say that there is separate, special devkit hardware for PS4 and it costs more than a consumer unit.

$2500

This is no longer accurate.

I find the video game console world so strange. Having to pay just to develop feels wrong but that the price is under NDA feels ridiculous. IMO it shouldn't be legal.

Apple charges to develop for iOS, correct?

But you are allowed to say what the price is, which is what GP was surprised by. It's $99 a year FYI.

Exactly. I don't like having to pay, obviously. But not being able to say the price is removing information from the market, not to avoid helping competitors, just to make it more inefficient and abuse a position of power.

Not necessarily. They charge $99/year to distribute your application, but for development you can run your application on your device for free[0]:

> You can launch your app on a device using a free Apple ID account, but the capabilities available to your app depends on the platform and your Apple Developer Program membership, described in Supported Capabilities.

You just won't have access to CloudKit, Game Center, Push Notifications, Wallet, In-App Purchases, etc.

[0]: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/ID...

Which is excusable - they're charging for their online services (essentially)

Kind of. You can enable 'developer mode' on a consumer Xbox One which allows you to run unsigned apps (UWP) but it doesn't give you full access like you would get with the full SDK which gives you a load more diagnostic, debugging and telemetry options.

How do they avoid enabling rampart piracy if you can do that to consumer units?

It doesn't allow it to run a ripped game like Halo 5. Any "real" game that needs full access to the Xbox hardware needs to be signed or tested on a proper dev unit. The 'dev mode on consumer consoles' is something for indies and such to test their UWP apps on. If someone happens to have the source code and project files to your UWP app then sure they could "pirate" it but I am not aware of that ever happening.

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