If this isn’t the oddest story of the day, we don’t know what is. At Develop, Xbox Advanced Technology Group’s Martin Fuller said that plans of having commercial Xbox One units doubling up as dev kits would not be happening.

As reported by GameSpot, Fuller said, “As far as I’m aware there are no plans. I’m not aware of the reason why we didn’t manage to do that.

“We were in the early stages of Xbox One looking at the idea of a retail kit that could be turned into a development kit, and vice versa. In the end, although that was a very admirable goal, it hasn’t happened unfortunately. Can’t tell you the specifics of exactly why not.”

Then, in a statement to Polygon, a Microsoft rep said that, “The comments today were inaccurate. We remain committed to ensuring the best possible solutions for developers and hobbyists to create games for Xbox One. We will share more details at a later date.”

Another public relatons nightmare for the company or simply another misunderstanding? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

After the phenomenal success of Rust, which crossed 1 million sales on Steam Early Access, Facepunch Studios’ founder and Gary’s Mod creator Garry Newman has tweeted about receiving dev kits for the Xbox One from Microsoft.

“Just got our Xbox One devkits…cleverly disguised as Xbox Ones with a barcode on! Thanks @PhilWaymouth”

Could this signal the release of Rust for the console? It seems unlikely, since ID@Xbox’s parity clause makes it hard for some developers to bring previously released games to the console. Nonetheless, if it means a whole new game, we’d be completely fine with that.

Facepunch is still plenty busy with Rust, the survival sand-box title which sees players trying to kill each other while scavenging for essentials before finally using their heads and just working together. Sooner or later that happens, right?

What do you think about Facepunch developing for the Xbox One? Let us know in the comments.

The Xbox One is available worldwide across 13 territories, and it has its issues. For instance, there’s a complaint about the some users not being able to access Party Chat while in a party.

A confirmed Xbox One developer addressed the problem on Reddit, stating that, “You might have a NAT issue” and referred him to the following. What if NAT is open? “In that case, it might be someone else in your party. I don’t remember specifically, but I read something about one person in the party having strict NAT prevents everyone from turning on chat. Either way, it sounds wrong to me. I do see this issue listed as one of the top we’re working on.”

He also spoke about a recent post in which a user unlocked developer settings. This is the method by which developers could convert their commercial Xbox One units into dev kits. However, as the dev stated, “Please don’t mess with anything here for the time being, especially the sandbox ID. You risk putting your box into a boot loop.”

When will it be available to the public? The dev remarked that, “I have no idea how far along the ID@Xbox program is. There are many concerns such as privacy, security, stability etc.., that need to be sorted out before we can allow anyone and everyone to simply sideload an app onto their box.”

So if you’re thinking about messing with the developer settings, be advised. As of now, we’ll be seeing games from the ID@Xbox program in 2014, but public access may be a ways off. Stay tuned for more details.

“So at first we have dedicated devkits [and that’s what we’ll send to developers]. But the existing devkit is just an Xbox that’s locked into development mode. The reason [for the delay] is that there’s some work we had to finish on the back end before we could enable it. But the boxes we ship on day one are all ready to be turned into development kits right away.

“The plan to turn a box into a devkit is [from] two years ago. It had to be. You don’t just decide that we’re just going to unlock the box magically and everyone can run unsecured code. We can do amazing things with this.

One of those things including whitelisting players. “We can whitelist players. We’re doing this with Killer Instinct. I’m going to be shipping characters after we launch and I’m going to invite about 10,000 people to be the ones that help us balance them; the same way that we’ve been inviting Evo people to Double Helix.

“I want to invite 10,000 really great players to help me lock down the balance on those last two characters. The way we do that is sort of like a mini version of what it means to be in devkit mode. What we’ll do is send them a code that’s whitelisted. They’re the only ones that can play it. And, again, you don’t architect that in minutes, this has been planned for years. So, yes, a lot of our ‘alterations’ in the last few months have just been us saying, “Now we get to explain to you [the things] we’ve had in mind all along.”

The Xbox One is currently set to release on November 22nd across 13 territories, with Killer Instinct being a launch title.

“In our pursuit of trying to create the best place to play, PlayStation has worked alongside revolutionary indie developers to give them the tools needed to self publish to the PlayStaion Store quickly and easily. My favorite game is a game called Octodad. Octodad started off as a school project, but within 48 hours of contacting PlayStation they had received their PlayStation 4 dev kit, and had the game up and running in only 3 weeks. Amazing.

“Just like Octodad, a ton of other amazing indie experiences are coming exclusively first to PlayStation.”

Such experiences include Wasteland Kings, Hotline Miami 2, The Witness, Transistor and many, many more. The PlayStation 4 is due to launch on November 15th across the United States.

And it looks like we put those timed exclusive rumours to rest (for the time being at least), as Respawn revealed that the video footage was from 2010. And regardless, they play video games all the time so a few controllers in the office are to be expected.

@NicholasGigante that's from 2010. No PS4 controllers existed then. Also, we play games at work so we have all systems. Got a WiiU also 🙂

— Respawn (@Respawn) August 26, 2013

It’s also been stated that “people are reading a lot into an old picture.”

@NicholasGigante Not sure what you're asking…just people are reading a lot into an old picture.

— Respawn (@Respawn) August 26, 2013

Which leads to a Wii U sales joke (we’re sorry Nintendo, we didn’t think it would go down like that).

So Titanfall will be releasing for the Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC when it lands in Spring 2014. Of course, EA’s Frank Gibeau assured us that the Xbox exclusivity doesn’t reflect a “strategic tilt” of any kind.

Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb stated in response that, “It’s up to developers to support that. These are two very different things.”

Why is this answer significant? If for no other reason than for the fact that it’s not an outright “No”, and with Microsoft backtracking on so many of its established policies to control users and their activities on the console, it definitely makes one wonder if mods could be next in line.

Neither the first Xbox or the Xbox 360 featured mod support however, and as of now, there’s no indication that the PlayStation 4 will either. Could this be Microsoft’s chance to finally get one over on Sony?

PS Vita dev kits will be placed at around €1,900, plus VAT.

“The PS Vita development kit is going to be very affordable,” said  Sony Computer Entertainment’s George Bain, speaking at GDC Europe. “And when I say affordable I mean €1,900 plus VAT.”

Compared to the €20,000 charged for the PS2 and PS3 and €15,000 charged for the PSP, Vita’s development kits are too cheap. Looks like Sony’s going all developer friendly with their new handheld. This definitely will attract a lot of third party support.

“There is no cost to join the PS Vita Develop Program,” Bain added. “There’s just that cost of the dev kit. If you’re a small developer, we happy to talk to you about this. It will help if you have a games portfolio. There’s no reason we won’t speak with smaller studios about joining up.”

Stay tuned for more on Vita.

Indie game developer Rubicon told Develop that Sony has provided them with four early PS Vita dev kits free of charge, so that they could build an upgraded version of the iOS title “Great Little War Game”.

“They’ve just always been so useful in dealing with us,” said Steven Haggerty of the Isle of Wight-based development team, also saying that SOny was “the best” of all platform holders in terms of how they behaved with indy game devs.

“We’ve worked with Apple, and you can’t get anything out of them,” he continued. “Microsoft rarely responds and I suppose Nintendo are okay, but Sony are always there to help. They always get back to you.”

According to rumours, Sony will be providing free dev kits for their handheld to all indie developers, but Sony hasn’t commented on these rumours yet. Stay tuned, we’ll keep you updated.

Shit looks bad right now but atleast this proves it “exists”

VG247 has obtained world-exclusive pictures of what is the Dev Kit of  PSP 2. The shots show both the front and back of the device. The device has two cameras, one in-front and one at the rear and also a trackpad at the back of the device.

VG247 says that this is not the final version of the device and you can expect it to undergo visual changes before hitting the market.

The PSP 2 rumours have been ripe in the past month with it being rumoured to be highly powerful containing twice the amount of RAM as compared to Xbox 360.

These images have been certified legit by the website and the device is rumoured to be heading for a fall 2011 release.