Hi, my name is Haquel and Iâm an Apple engineer now supporting PlayStation. Quick question: for large teams, is there any practical limit to how many dev/test kits can be obtained? What usually drives approval for additional kits (team size, usage, priority)? What's the turn around to receive the kits? Also, how do teams realistically scale testing given hardware constraints?Thanks!
I think it depends on what you mean by "large teams". For most dev teams, the need for dev kits varies on the role of the developer. Artists and animators, for example, don't really need their own dev kits - a group of artists can share a dev kit or two because they really only need to verify that their work looks proper in engine when they are nearly finished. The ratio of time spent using the dev kit to validate their work compared to the time spent doing that work is small.
Programmers, on the other hand, more often need to debug directly on the console in order to track down bugs. At one point, I was working on a multiplayer system and had to commandeer two other dev kits (for a total of three) in order to test out my synchronized animation system. I had built a system for one player to grab and choke another player to death. The three dev kits were needed to make sure that the killer, the victim, and the observer all played their respective synchronized animations properly on their monitors at the right locations and angles. I don't have a dev kit now; I verify my work on the PC build of the game I'm working on. My boss told me early that they'll give me a dev kit if I need one, but the need hasn't arisen yet.
QA usually uses test kits instead of dev kits - these are usually slightly weaker development machines that can play development builds but lack the extra memory and beefy hardware that the dev kits have in order to run debug builds. Test kits are significantly cheaper than dev kits.
From what I remember, most studios get an allotment of dev and test kits based on their need and the team size. The leadership then gets to figure out who gets them. The turnaround is usually a question of getting everybody involved to sign the appropriate legal contracts and such, and then getting the process approved by Sony. I've never worked on that part of sourcing, the team leadership usually just had the dev kits ready for us when we needed them. On occasion a dev kit gets bricked and needs to be replaced and that usually takes a couple of weeks. That's all I really know about the actual sourcing aspect of dev kits.
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