Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gjsman-1000 879 days ago
No kid is going to learn how to program in Assembly and C++, when interfacing with a custom microkernel, custom graphics API, and all of the technical requirements Nintendo demands (i.e. you must have a launch screen, loading times cannot be longer than X, read speeds cannot peak higher than Y), while cross-compiling your game and all dependencies to ARM, and precompiling all shaders ahead of time, for the Tegra X1, into your game. That's what developing for the Switch literally entails. Develop your game first and then you might get there.

This is a game console, not a PC. Developing games, for better or worse, whether it should be this way or not, is an extreme privilege. Sony basically never allows individual developers to register in any capacity. Xbox does, but if you want to actually publish a game, you're going to be in for a hard time.
2 comments
bee_rider 879 days ago
It has around a 1Ghz cpu, you have no idea if their little homebrew games will stress that or need all the assembly tuning.

Kids have programmed games for their calculators. This is like “throw it together to show off your friends,” it doesn’t need to meet Nintendo’s UI standards.

link
gjsman-1000 879 days ago
> This is like “throw it together to show off your friends,” it doesn’t need to meet Nintendo’s UI standards.

In that case, unless it goes on the eShop (thus meeting Nintendo's standards), every single one of her friends will also need a devkit to be able to run it; as retail units can't decrypt devkit-encrypted games, nor vice versa.

Might as well get a Steam Deck before convincing Nintendo to send over 10 devkits for children.

link
Nullabillity 879 days ago
> This is a game console, not a PC.

Game consoles are arbitrarily restricted PCs.

link