Speaking to GameDaily at the Casual Connect event in Kiev, Ukraine, Sony Europe’s Developer Relations Manager George Bain has revealed that European developers will no longer need content approval to create titles for PlayStation 2.
As a consequence, he said, the PS2 "is effectively an open platform."
Developers can obtain a license for Sony hardware free of charge, but will still have to stump up funds for a development kit. The manufacturer will loan dev kits on occasion, Bain added, and developers at work on smaller, casual projects will have the option of using vastly cheaper debug units.
The move will benefit companies with minimal budgets, he went on, as it will allow them to "create low-development cost titles and release them in their market."
But will low development cost equate to a low quality game? We hope not. As the oldest and most popular console out there, the PS2 has seen more than its fair share of shovelware.