It seems as though Sony is on a rampage to right the wrongs of the expensive PS3 not only for consumers, but for the game companies as well. PS3 dev kits will now only cost about half as much as they once did.
Dev kits, which are the machines that game developers use to design specific console titles on, cost anywhere from a couple of thousand dollars for the Wii to the uber pricey PS3 dev kit, which until now, clocked in at a hefty cost of over $20,000. Not good news for aspiring or smaller game companies. The new price will now be $10,250 in North America, (Europe: 7,500 Euros/ 950,000 Yen in Japan).
Known officially as the PS3 “Reference Tool,” the savings in picking up a dev kit at the lower price will certainly help to drive more titles into the PS3 game channel by third party game developers who may have balked at the original $20,000 price tag.
Sony said, "As more and more new titles are developed for the PS3 format, SCEI will significantly reduce the price of the Reference Tool in order to contribute to the cost saving measures of the development community.”
The new lower priced PS3 dev kit will also offer enhancements to game developers to make the building of PS3 games simpler such as enhanced debugging routines, easier processes to develop code, (coming from a long standing gripe concerning the difficulty of programming the PS3) and other new tools to make game making easier.
[via gi.biz]
