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[neon]

PS2 is now an open platform...

and the ponderous gears of my plan begin to creak into motion...

[Eclipse]

What's the main differences between a devkit and a debug kit?

a debug version of a console is just the console as is but capable to run debug code and to give some output via ethernet if connected to a pc, a devkit is a sligtly more powerful console, normally it has a lot more memory, because debug stuff takes ram too, and other stuff... so what is called "debug kit" is just a console able to run unlicensed code, and it's more a test unit, as you can't truly develop on it as you do on the devkit or on a pc, because you need to stay inside the device limitations even under debugging.. it's a good choice for a game that doesn't need to push the console hardware limits

[Bad Sector]

Well, yeah, it wouldn't be free but it would at least be cheaper. You'd have to pay to have the CD:s printed anyway. Again, I'm not saying it's the coolest thing in the world and something I want to do, but it's nice to see a big company like Sony releasing their retired hardware to the public instead of just leaving it as-is.

The thing is, they're not actually releasing to the public. Instead they just drop the gatekeeping process. You still need devkits and you still need to make special disks. And lets not forget the distribution and -of course- promotion costs for a game. Most of these are outside the range of an indie developer, unless some sort of company is made which does this work for smaller studios. In this case however, you get your gatekeeper back (since a company wouldn't go through all that effort just to sell one disk - printing disks is only profitable when done in masses - so they will filter the games). The only difference is who keeps the gates now :-)