Can you compile an executable that will run on pc?
The SDK has a PVita / PSSuite simulator for PC, so you can run in your PC the demos or your app / game.
Not exactly an executable, but factually is the same, it works flawlessly.
Their policy for no free products is a huge turn off. They allow freemium, but nothing like free + ad support, which is big for some developers. So far android games should be easy ports.. not sure about iOS.
As an experieced mobile phone developer with several hits, I can say that the free demo + paid full game doesn't work due to piracy in both systems, and the free+ad support doesn't give you enough money unless you have Angry Birds. What it really work is freemiun, a free game with microtransaction properly designed to let the user pay as much money as he wants. Most people won't pay, some will pay a really low amount, but there is a small portion of user who spends insane amounts of money, covering the others.
So - can someone with some programming chops tell us what sort of impact this suite might have for dual iOS/PS Suite development?
Just checked ot a bit, but it's really easy to use, has tons of example and FREE. This means you can learn really fast without needing to pay a fee, to buy a MAC etc.
Right now it's C#(a really popular language that every game coder knows to program for), runs in a virtual machine. This means it will be really easy, fast and cheap to port it to other PS Suite devices but you won't take advantage of the hardware like the dedicated games. So maybe isn't good for high-end games (not needed since you have Vita retail games), but it's perfect for small, indie, casual games.
They're different beasts, but considering it from the start of the game the dual (multiplatform) development it wouldn't be a problem. And PSSuite / Android it's easier but if you'll have both stores in the same deviceI don't know if it makes sense.
So for those of you with programming experience and sometime with the beta, how impressive/or not does the SDK seem to you at this stage? I went through the samples, and while they were obviously very rough I was actually kind of impress with some of them. The RPG demo for instance, show a pretty large area to be explored which gives me some hope about how open world games could turn out on the Vita, not to mention that I found the colors to be pretty impressive but that might be from the OLED.
As i've said previously, I'm really just starting to learn some of this stuff, just curious what other more experienced folks are thinking of it.
For experienced people, it's a great start to make small, phone like games. Free of all the typical dumb stuff that prevents small, indie devs to start programming for consoles, the best approach a 1st party ever did (the beta, let's see how is to publish a game, revenue share for the dev etc in the future). It's just a beta, so it will be improved for sure. But won't be for high end games because you have Vita retail/PSN games for this and this should run in other less powerful devices like phones and tablets with other specs. Don't expect a GTA here, but it's great for Cut the rope, Angy Birds etc like games.
There are examples for everything. If you have some minimal knowledge of game programming is really easy to use. But if not it may hard to start like in any other platform. Well, maybe a bit easier if you have some programming skills. But a game also needs game design, art, music, testing and to understand the market and its size to make a budget considering it. Don't expect 3M copies at launch.
How user friendly would these tools be for someone like me that's never programmed anything before?
Near 0, avoid it.