Sony Looks to Spur PS3 Game Development

Recent price cuts for the PlayStation 3 have finally turned on the juice in terms of sales, but what the troubled console really needs are more games. By slashing the price of the PS3 software development kit, Sony is clearly hoping to close the gap.

The AP reports that Sony has chopped the price for the PS3 SDK in half, to $10,250 in the U.S. from north of $20,000. By cutting PS3 development fees, more developers may be interested in writing games for the console, which is still looking for an exclusive, killer title (such as Halo 3 on the Xbox 360, or Wii Sports for the Wii).

Sony may still have a long road to hoe, however. Writing games for the Cell processor-powered PS3 is notoriously difficult; as the AP points out, many dedicated PS2 programmers gave up writing games for the next-gen PlayStation, opting instead to go with the Wii. Indeed, Gabe Newell of Valve (developer of the Half-Life series and the popular Orange Box package) has openly trashed the PS3, declaring: "Investing in the Cell...gives you no long-term benefits. You're not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they've created." Ouch. (Valve ultimately farmed out the PS3 version of the Orange Box to another development house.)

So will slashing the PS3 SDK price lead to a surge in PS3 games? Hard to say: $10,000 isn't chump change, but when you consider the million of dollars it takes to develop a major next-generation game, it's hard to imagine the price cut itself making a big difference. Then again, take that coupled with the recent spike in PS3 sales, and more game developers may decide that coding for the tricky PlayStation 3 platform is a worthy investment.

Related:
Sony cuts fees for PS3 game developers [AP via Yahoo! News]