oh god...why do they keep on coming

listen dude, it matters not how good you THINK you are, even very basic PC games need a team of experienced coders, artists, producers, QA people etc, to be able to produce something that is commercially viable.

The best a hobbiest could manage, even a very good hobbiest with a few mates helping out, would be a nice little shareware or budget title (I've got my flame suit on, guys, so no point in getting mad at me you know its true, show me one hobby game in the top 20...go on? Top 40 then?)

Unless your idea is Tetris simple and goign to sell millions becuase it's cute, or unbelievibly easy to code you are talking about months or years of development hell to produce any kind of major title on a par with the retail sector.
And unless you can target the retail sector you cannot get access to console tech from the makers.

It takes teams of 100's now to produce PS2 and Xbox titles of the quality that hits the shelves, and will need more for PS3 and X360, and literally 10's of thousands of man hours to produce these titles. The budgets as has been pointed out start at 10million dollars....the kits themselves cost 20,30,40K+ each.

Do you really think a 14yo with no experience of the systems, no concept of game development procedure, and clearly no idea whatsoever of market realities can bang out a game in his lifetime?

None of the console makers will talk to you unless you have a team big enough to cope, a bank balance big enough to cope, a proof of concept demo that blows them away (which in itself will take a prototyping team 4-8 months to produce) and a proven track record of delivering high quality titles.

You have to prove to the console makers you can produce the game, that means huge marketing presentations, not just a call to the xbox helpline, you have to show them market straegy, quality control, production processs and proven tech...then...maybe if they think the idea will sell minimum 100K units (and that bar is rising) they will let you talk to them about buying dev kits and blowing your money.

please...get real, stick with systems that you can handle, PC is available to all and there's a good market, GBA,PS1, Dreamcast and linux PS2 systesm are available to the hobby market and will allow you to gain experience of console dev.

But till you get that $10-20M int eh bank, forget about current consoles or nect gen systems..They'll become available to the hobby market in time, but you ain't ever going to be able to write a game at home for the PS3 withouth a lot of people backign you up...which then brings up teh managment side of things....

rant over.

I definitely agree with the guy above. But in the spirit of encouraging new comers and being part of what this forum is about, you can also start with cell phones. It's new and there is not much quality control in this market

Encouraging people, is also about setting realistic goals. Kids coming in, expecting to get Microsoft to deliver an xbox360 dev kit and a how to write your game manual, so they can have the great game they were talking about with their mates at school on the shelves in a month, is never going to happen, NEVER.

Disappointment at not being able to produce anything close to their expectations, probably puts more people off development than anything I know

Set your sights on what is possible, do it, do it well, then start to tackle the trickier stuff, build on a series of successes, not disappointments. Your ability, confidence and skills will grow much better with this, do your apprenticeship, work at it...console dev is bloody hard work even for seasoned pros, realise this and put in the hours. You'll get there in the end if you keep at it.

I work in a major studio in production producing top 5 titles...My figures are generalised, but for the work we do the teams are around 120-130 people, NOT counting marketing. Our lowest budgets are $10M, most are $25K+...yes a few studios manage prjects under 1 million...most are crap..nearly all current retail projects have $10-20m budgets.

dev kit prices vary, and no fixed price for the new consoles currently exist, the guide prices are probably accurate, but I was also taking into account other factors, software, compilers/art packages, additional addons, PC's assest control software and so.
There are a few instances of big studios getting them free...but thats only for the people planning release titles.

According to your posting history, in May you were asking what program was good to get started with game development. Game console programming is damned bloody hard, even without the cash-and-reputation requirements.

Good thing you're not going to be 18 for another four years, because that's largely about the amount of time you're going to need to become a competent game programmer on any platform.

sorry, take it or leave it. Others on here with some know how will back this up. NDA's make it impossible for me to openly discuss anything to do with the development scale, targets, titles budgets and tech details of anything we do.

so its just friendly advice, feel free to ignore if you choose. But its not worht me getting disciplined or worse to make myself known.