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Comment by klausa | Hacker News Reader

GDK is much more open nowadays (AIUI you can basically deploy stuff to your own Xbox by just signing few things online?), but you're basically right.

People are assuming this is meant to be a general-purpose, generic replacement; but it is quite narrowly focused on gamedev.

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> you can basically deploy stuff to your own Xbox by just signing few things online

Is this true? I've been wanting to be able to develop my own console stuff for a long time, but the hoops have seemed insurmountable so far. Can I really deploy my own stuff to Xbox without having to pay huge fees and have calls with a sales team?

For publishing to some store, that's fine, but just for development I just wanna be able to get a build running without too much red tape, otherwise it's not fun and therefore not worth it.

Yep, just install the Devmode app and follow the steps.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/devk...

Lots of guides available for different scenarios (C++, Unity or HTML/JS)

Ah, this is specifically for Xbox apps, not games. You're not getting access to a bunch of things with this method (especially w.r.t. graphics APIs.) As far as I can tell, the full GDK is still behind a contract and NDA.

Ah damn, seems you're right.

From the GDK GitHub (https://github.com/microsoft/gdk):

> How do I run a GDK game built for the Xbox App on Windows 10 or Xbox Game Pass for PC on Xbox Consoles?

> Xbox console development requires the “Microsoft Game Development Kit with Xbox Extensions (GDKX)”. Games will need to retarget and rebuild for Xbox One or Xbox Series X|S with the GDKX installed.

> You need to download, install, and retarget your project for Xbox consoles using the GDKX

> The GDKX is currently only available under confidential license within an NDA Xbox program (e.g. ID@Xbox).

Sorry for giving you false hope!

Yeah, its a somewhat unfortunate reality that if you want to get full access to the consoles, you need to be an actual gamedev and sign some contracts. Microsoft does not suffer poor fools just trying to learn how to get the most out of the Xbox. Sony is much the same in this regard, and nevermind Nintendo.

I do wish they made Xbox more available to students in gamedev/cs degrees. When I was in school, Microsoft actually sponsored the program I was in, and I had a chance to work on Xbox stuff that as a student I would not have had any access to otherwise; That ended up being really useful to my early career -- not a lot of college grads have experience with developing and publishing for real on Xbox.

I think that's the case for 'Apps' but not games. Like I said in another post, my info is several years dated at this point, so things may have changed, but when I was in this field, if you wanted to publish a game vs a non-game app, there were many more requirements. Apps had pretty limited amounts of scrutiny and certification hoisted on them, while games had several hundred certification requirements for a ton of different things they had to meet. Apps also did not get access to the full capabilities of the console, whereas games did. Under the hood there were quite a few differences between how apps and games were provisioned, published and run -- games are almost like a container image rather than a regular windows app.

Oh if you want to _publish_ I'm sure it's a whole different ballgame, but if you're just playing around and/or developing a game (and don't need a full on DevKit), it's relatively straightforward.

AFAIK this isn't really true. Microsoft made the GDK public, but only for targeting Windows 10/11. The portion for targeting the Xbox is still under NDA. You can get access to developer mode for your Xbox by signing a few things online and paying a nominal fee, but that level of access only lets you deploy UWP apps to your Xbox, not do native development.

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