Watch the video again.  Sony are publishing; XDev are assisting development.  This is a Sony-made title; unless you want to argue that the original LittleBigPlanet and things like Heavenly Sword aren't Sony games.

I'm sure you could've done better than that with just a few minutes of research.  Sly Cooper; Tearaway; Invizimals etc. would be the games I'd use to highlight Sony trying to skew younger, not PSABR.

And that's another point - a year ago saying "Sony has nothing else for kids", I'd agree.  Today, I honestly can't agree anymore.  Most of what Sony has done this year has been focused on a younger audience.  Even porting things like Epic Mickey 2 across - makes no sense really, but in the context of "we're filling our console with more child-friendly games" it at least holds up better.

There's no doubt they're not going to beat Nintendo at this demographic.  But equally, they weren't 'winning' anything chasing after their own demographic of older "gamers" wanting a proper handheld.  

Yes, because Nintendo invented the artificial pet simulator genre.  

Eh... Sony has great stuff for kids this year?  Aside from Epic Mickey, they haven't done anything this year to cater to that audience, and Epic Mickey 2 wasn't appealing to children or anything else.  Sly Cooper seems more aimed at people who played the game on the original PS2.  Of course neither of those games seemed to appeal to kids on the Vita, so the point still stands.  The Vita doesn't have appealing software for kids, and having unappealing kids software doesn't really help their cause.

Assisting though, this may not have been their idea.  An indie studio probably presented it to Sony and asked for funding.  Though it's hard to say where assisting starts and where it ends.  This could just be a money thing or they might be actually helping out with other resources.  External Development Studio might not having anything to do with the actual development aside from funding.  

Given the fact they were pushing Sly Cooper with an animation short this year, it at least felt like they were aiming to get a younger audience involved.

And again, the point wasn't that they're having crazy successes this year (I agree with you; they're not).  The point is this time last year, they seemingly didn't care about targeting this audience at all.  This year, they are at least attempting it with both games and advertising:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1muJu6flpaA

Maybe it won't work - in fact, I think it probably won't (although achieved some late-in-life success in Europe aiming at kids with Invizimals).  But there's no way of knowing until they try.

I don't think Ratchet and Clank the movie is gonna be rated 18...