Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!scea!peter_alau@playstation.sony.com From: "J. Pretorius" Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Licensed Developer Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 23:40:46 -0800 Organization: @Home Network Lines: 20 Message-ID: <36F896FE.D1C01655@home.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.64.199.168.bc.wave.home.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.02 [en]C-AtHome0402 (Win95; U) Does anybody know what the requirements are for becomming a licensed Playstation developer? Its obvious that Sony, Sega and Nintendo are quite restrictive as to whom they license their development tools to. I was looking at the SCEA web site and they don't even want to hear from potential developers unless you give them detailed information about your company including management biographies. I don't understand the logic behind restricting who can develop for a system. It can't be for quality control reasons: there are dozens of titles published by big name companies that are so poor they border on fraud. Besides, Sony/Nintendo have the final say as to whether or not a title meets their quality standards and may be released. I've heard people say that becomming a succesful games company requires millions in capital and therefore it's not viable to allow small companies to develop. Thankfully this is not yet true, but even if it were, why would Sony or Nintendo care if a company failed while attempting to create a game? Are the video game manufacturers/developers purposely trying to make it difficult for small companies to enter the market in an effort to preserve their market share? Hmmm, perhaps someone from Sony could provide some insight, please.. James