Sony’s Danks explains PlayStation-edu

 A bit of information was given by Senior Manager of Developer Support at SCEA Mark Danks on what exactly the idea is behind their PlayStation-edu initiative. It turns out that this is a drive to get game development into mainstream education channels by tying up with colleges and universities. Curious? See the full article up ahead.

Senior Manager of Developer Support at SCEA Mark Danks earlier gave details as to what exactly the touted PlayStation-edu concept is. It turns out that the idea is to bring development for PlS2 and PSP to colleges and universities so that learning can take place in the fundamental level.

“Consoles and multi-core are here to stay,” he said. “Beyond that all things change and you need to learn the basics at the low level. So Assembly is here to stay!”

He continues “too many students canÂ’t explain a pointer, canÂ’t explain memory caches, canÂ’t explain bus contention, canÂ’t explain how a complier works, cant explain a software rasterizer, canÂ’t explain a race condition.” He then lamented how most schools are treating game education like trade subjects.

Danks earmarked PlayStation-edu as a means to advance professional game development as a bigger increment of computer science rather tham simple art. “The goal is to reach the people who care about the metal — engine level coders who like to write in assembly,” he revealed.

Danks gave a bit of information as to how schools can start tying up with Sony for the program. He said institutions will have to agree with the company on several legal covenants, after which the distribution of devkits can start at US$ 2,000 and US$ 1,500 a pop.

This should provide an avenue for aspiring game developers to learn the basics in school if they can’t do it on their own. We’ll give you more updates for PlayStation-edu as more word comes out.

Via Gamasutra