Sony Offers Universities PSP, PS2 Dev Kits

[JKKDARK]

via Gamasutra

Sony has announced PlayStation-edu, a new initiative that will sell PS2 and PSP development kits to universities for students to learn engineering and programming skills on real-world console and handheld hardware.

The announcement came via Sony's official PlayStation.Blog, where senior developer support manager Mark Danks said the company wanted to ensure "students who are graduating from college are ready to program on PlayStation hardware."

Danks clarified the program was meant for "computer science and engineering students who want to understand how the hardware works in the PlayStation consoles," and not more general game design or art programs.

Paying university partners can get access to both PS2 and PSP development kits, as well as "development software... and the SDK to learn and experiment with."

"Participants will get demo code and samples, as well as documentation about how things work," Danks added, and noted that "students in PlayStation-edu will have access to our support web site where they can talk with other students in the program on our forums."

[kharaboudjan]

thats sounds like a good idea! hopefully something great will come out from this =)

[osgeld]

the chances anyone is going to directly work with a game console on the development side is extremely rare, this might improve the odds

but from a educational stance wouldn't the students benefit more from using real world systems, such as psc scanners, embedded controllers, routers and whatnot

that way they didnt piss 4 years and tens of thousands of dollars just to have their "rock star" dreams shattered with nothing to fall back on ... its pretty easy going from embedded systems to a psp, but not the other way round

if you cant tell im one of those that say video game consoles do not belong in a classroom

[mike_jmg]

Hope something good comes out of this

[wolfpack]

maybe another famous homebrew maker will be found

[Justise]

It took them some time to understand that third party developers wont come on their own...

[John Vattic]

the chances anyone is going to directly work with a game console on the development side is extremely rare, this might improve the odds

but from a educational stance wouldn't the students benefit more from using real world systems, such as psc scanners, embedded controllers, routers and whatnot

that way they didnt piss 4 years and tens of thousands of dollars just to have their "rock star" dreams shattered with nothing to fall back on ... its pretty easy going from embedded systems to a psp, but not the other way round

if you cant tell im one of those that say video game consoles do not belong in a classroom

lol right on!

[newb_fo_life]

maybe another famous homebrew maker will be found

Maybe Another famous leak :P

[dangee]

& todays subject for discussion is ...

"hacking & cracking, beatin' & cheatin'"

[Avenyet]

bleh now I don't like the sound of that.

uni's already have XNA being forced upon them. they really don't need anything like this ok it would be cool for a quick 20 min demo of how making and testing game is done in the real world but even thats a but pointless.

the best thing for a student is to study the concepts of computer design then give a simple project to learn the basics of implementing and making a simple game thne move on to a PC game engine.

the reason I think this is the best way is i'm currently working for a company that develops for the PS2 and the Wii and all our work is done on the PC the only time the dev kits are used is when we are doing a play test. so teaching students to program for a PS2 is pointless in every way shape and form