
In early March Sony made some waves saying the PS3 is hard to develop for on purpose. In the last days news surrounding new tools for PS3 developers have appeared. We already reported about the NVIDIA PhysX engine available now on the PS3.
Now Sony is further enhancing its support for developers with the introduction of new Reference Tool models in March 2009, DECR-1400A for North America and Europe/PAL territories at US $2,000 and €1,700 respectively, and DECR-1400J for Japan at JPY 200,000.

Why did Sony push Shuhei Yoshida out of his role leading PlayStation's first-party games? He'd overseen some huge successes. Well, apparently, he didn't listen.
Yeah I can see that for sure. Shuhei Yoshida should have been in charge not Jim Ryan.
More confirmation that Jim Ryan is the culprit for what has happened to Sony. Hulst needs to go too. What sucks is that a lot of the good top heads at Sony are no longer there. I wish that guys that were forced out prematurely by Dumbo Jimbo like Shuhei and Layden came back.
Makes you wonder if MS even thought about hiring him after Phil and Sarah were leaving. He certainly couldn't make their situation any worse.
All the gamer/consumer lead heads are gone across PS and Xbox. shuhei gone phil's gone (questionable) but gone. The future of gaming is somewhat uncertain across the board.
Former Naughty Dog artist Gabriel Betancourt explains why the "sweet spot" for game teams is under 200 people and how AAA "factories" kill creativity.
There’s definitely some truth to this. When teams get too large, coordination starts to outweigh creativity—layers of approval, risk aversion, and tight deadlines can turn bold ideas into “safe” ones. Keeping a team under ~200 people sounds ideal for maintaining clear communication and a shared vision. That said, massive AAA projects also come with huge technical demands and expectations, so scaling up isn’t always avoidable. The real challenge is figuring out how to keep that small-team creativity alive inside big studio structures.

The name "Hewson" carries a special weight for anyone who grew up during the golden age of British computing. As the son of Andrew Hewson—the man behind legendary publisher Hewson Consultants—Rob Hewson didn't just grow up playing video games; he learned to spell his name from their title screens. However, Rob didn't just rest on his family's 8-bit laurels. From leading major LEGO franchises at TT Games to tackling the high-stakes world of technical porting at Huey Games, Rob has carved out a unique path in an ever-evolving industry. In this candid interview Rob to discussed the burden and beauty of a family legacy, the technical "scar tissue" left by the ambitious Hydrophobia, and why porting a masterpiece like Inscryption to consoles is far more than a simple copy-paste job.
This means that If I and a few of my buddies got into development we could spend 2000 dollars on a developers kit (really cheap) then spend about6 months or so (estimate) making a little PSN game have about a 10-12 man team sounds like something to do and make pretty good money off of. :) I wanna make video games when I'm done with school.
Devs now have no excuse to say its hard to make games for the PS3. But DANM!!! 2G's for the Kit? Im getting one ASAP
yep, Cheaper Dev kit= More games to look foward to by developers who can finally afford to get one, not to mention tools that makes developing on the PS3 easier than ever before.
$10,250 to $2,000? Not bad.