SN Systems is a provider of

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based development tools for games consoles, including the

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, PlayStation 2,

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, and PSP. The company had provided tools for the Atari ST,

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, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Super NES,

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, 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

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

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, 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 Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), formerly known as Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), is a multinational video game and digital entertainment company wholly owned by multinational conglomerate Sony. The SIE Group is made up of two legal co ...

Inc. in 2005, to provide tools for the PlayStation 3, and future consoles. Based in

Bristol, England Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

, they have satellite offices in Campbell, California and

Dublin, Ireland Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...

Products

Central to the SN Systems product line is the ProDG suite, comprising a

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and integration with

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, together with a debugger and additional build tools.

References

{{Sony Interactive Entertainment Windows games Programming tools for Windows Sony Interactive Entertainment British companies established in 1990 Companies based in Bristol Software companies established in 1990 Software companies of England Video game development companies 2005 mergers and acquisitions