They're not moneyhatting them. They're being very flexible to indie dev needs and trying to remove the needless barriers that have previously blocked indies from releasing their games on consoles. It's actually a very clever tactic as it's not costing Sony anything to bolster their release schedule.

As for the Vita love, well indies seem to do better on Vita than the other consoles, so it's a bit of a no brainer to make Vita games at the moment. The extra horsepower and resolution over the portable competition with physical controls also helps the developers bring their visions to life more easily without compromise.

Back in May yes. But not today.

It cost Indie devs $2000 for a PS4 dev kit ( Initial kits were free, but only the first batch ). Then licensing costs on top.

For Xbox One it costs $499 for a retail Xbox One ( which is a dev kit ) and now they can publish said game on Windows 8, WP8 and Xbox One themselves. No fees.

Its now massively cheaper for Indies on Microsoft platforms.

So how are Sony moneyhatting them exactly?

Funny how those who say that about people are the biggest offenders being biased towards Sony. Captain_tom, liquorandgunfun, kupomogli, the list doesn't end.

Anyway, reading Kowen's post I see no trolling in it. A bit obnoxious to assume it's only money talking, but there's no trolling in that. Also, Bernard says it's the best handheld, but in what way he doesn't say.

It costs $499 to get a retail Xbox which will at one point become a dev kit, that feature could be released in 2015 for all we know. Also I would love a source for the bolded part.

No problem. Like I said. The initial batches were handed out like candy to trusted devs. The rest will and already are paying for their kits. Oh and the indies look as though they are only loaned for 1 year. They have to pay for it after that. So Microsoft is actually doing much more for the indie since July.

"Polygon spoke to various development sources who say that the PlayStation 4 dev kit costs about $2,500, which is $2,000 more than an Xbox One. Indie Xbox One developers will also pay a fee to Microsoft, which a source said is a few hundred dollars. Microsoft declined to talk publicly about the fee.

Although this $2,500 price is being cited in development circles, the game-makers we spoke to all said that Sony had lent them dev kits for a limited period of one year, for free. As of right now, there are no dev kits being sold. Sony is sending whatever it has available to favored developers"

http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/24/4553842/so-how-much-does-it-cost-to-develop-for-playstation-4

I'm not sure what you'd consider trolling about it.  As a F2P indie developer i'd imagine he'd become the first party developer for any company in a heartbeat.  That should be fairly obvious.

This is just your average positive "puff" piece.

I don't see where you get from that article that only the initial batch of dev kits were "handed out like candies", the article doesn't say it like that and if you go to Sonys Developer page it states that you can still get a PS4 loaned. But yeah Microsoft is giving away dev kits for free I'm not gonna discredit that. They only do that if you're a "proven indie developer" though, but you'll probably have to be something along those lines as well for Sony to loan you PS4 devkit.

What I really don't see in that article is that Sony is asking devs to pay licensing fees rather it says that Microsoft is doing so. n fact if you visit Sonys Developer Homepage again you'll see it states that are not asking for any licensing fees.

Link to the developer page: http://us.playstation.com/develop/

"Sony is sending whatever it has available to favored developers"

Either way. Its cheaper for the next 10 years for an indie dev to continue developing on Xbox One. As the licensing fee for Xbox One is a couple of hundred $.

Its great for the first year on PS4, after that they have to pay up.

vita....