How to Make a Video Game for PS3

Shu Yoshida, senior vice president of product development at Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), explained the process that goes into developing games for the PS3. He blogged that for other consoles, games must be approved. But with the PS3, he blogged, they worked on the "red-light" system, which means that developers must stop at several points in the development process and can have their rights canceled or changed. This is a basic rundown of how a PS3 game is made.

Come up with an idea. You will need a basic idea of where you want to go with the game. Is it a fantasy adventure game? A first-person shooter?

Turn your basic idea into a concept. At this point you should be hiring and including artists and designers. The game should start to get a look and a feel. You should also be developing the plot.

Develop another concept. You will need several well-designed concepts to present to SCEA in order to get the go-ahead to the next step. It is important here to make all of the candidate concepts worthy of a real investment. You will want to give them solid options. If your candidate concept is chosen, you will move on to the next step and receive the Software Development Kit (SDK).

Develop a prototype. This is going to cost some money and take some time. According to Yoshida, most prototypes take more than a year and cost between $2 million and $5 million dollars. You will need another go-ahead after the prototype to move to the next stage in development. At this point, they will be testing the prototype and marketing, as well as looking within Sony Entertainment to decide what regions the game will work best and matching it up versus their competitors.

Complete a finished game through full production. This is where the art goes into motion. You must finish designing your game and then model levels and characters and write the necessary code to put it all together. SCEA will want to test your game during production and give you suggestions and guidance along the way. They will want to make sure the game is marketable, able for competition and gives a good name to Sony and the PlayStation 3.