Sony are set to announce a new open interchange file format for the interactive 3D gaming industry called ‘Collada’, which will be used across middleware programs for next generation game development. This new file format is supported by several big names in the computer graphics and middleware industry such as Alias (the makers of Maya) and Criterion (the makers of Renderware) and many others including Discreet, Emidigo, Novodex, Softimage and Vicarious Visions.
If you combine this with the recent news that Sony has joined Khronos Group to support OpenGL/ES, OpenMAX, OpenVG and OpenML, it seems evident that Sony is quietly fighting back against Microsoft’s XNA with its own open game development platform.
Source: Official Collada Site