Website www.snsystems.com Founded 1987 | Headquarters Bristol | |
Type Subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment Industry Software Development
Computer and video games Key people Andy Beveridge
(Founder and Director)
Martin Day
(Founder and Research Director) Products ProDG
SNC Compiler
SN-DBS (Distributed Build Server) Parent organization Sony Interactive Entertainment | ||
SN Systems is a provider of Windows based development tools for games consoles, including the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PlayStation, PlayStation Vita, and PSP.
Contents
The company had provided tools for the Atari ST, Amiga, Sega Saturn, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Super NES, Nintendo 64, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS.
History
The company was founded in 1990 by Martin Day and Andy Beveridge. Both directors have backgrounds of developing game console software development tools, such as SNASM and Psy-Q, at Cross Products and later Psygnosis.
SN Systems' long association with the PlayStation line of consoles began in 1993, when PlayStation manufacturer Sony acquired Psygnosis, who were publishing SN Systems' tools at the time. While Sony had provided MIPS R4000-based Sony NEWS workstations for PlayStation development, Psygnosis disliked the thought of developing on these expensive workstations and asked SN Systems to create a PC-based development system. At the 1994 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, Psygnosis arranged an audience for SN Systems with Sony's Japanese executives, and Sony were impressed enough with their development tools that they decided to abandon their plans for a workstation-based development system in favor of using SN Systems' development system exclusively.
In 1999, SN Systems won a Game Developer Magazine "Front Line Award" in the Programming Environment category for its Nintendo 64 development product called SN64. The company won again in 2005, this time for the ProDG for PSP suite.
SN Systems was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. in 2005, to provide tools for the PlayStation 3, and future consoles.
Based in Bristol, England, they have satellite offices in Campbell, California and Dublin, Ireland.
Products
Central to the SN Systems product line is the ProDG suite, comprising a compiler and integration with Microsoft Visual Studio, together with a debugger and additional build tools. SN Systems now may include its own SNC compiler with ProDG, rather than a derivative of the compiler provided by the console manufacturer (frequently a variant of GNU Compiler Collection).