Screwing the publishers on one hand and helping the developers on the other hand. I like it.

Where did I say that one was directly linked to the other? 

Possibly due to the post I quoted in my post? I can see where it looks that way.

I only said that they could be making progress that nobody knows about because it is true that we have no clue what progressed they have made. I was bringing it up because devs complained about dev kit prices and console price and asked if anyone thought that Sony may try to bring in more support by giving in to not just one, but both of these requests. I made that more apparent in my 3rd post in this thread.

I figured it may be a legitimate question considering the price drop rumours.

Heh.  Maybe in your studio, that's true. =)

Besides, lots of studios have more than 40 engineers, and lots of studios need 2 devkits for most of those engineers (multiplayer testing).  It varies widely, but trust me when I say I know of studios that have over 160 devkits, all platforms inclusive, and test kits as well.

That comment was mainly pointed at the other thread I locked.

True, I did not think about multiplayer since I have little multiplayer console experience, but do all the programmers even need two devkts?

Oh alright.

I know I mentioned the same exact thing in that thread that why I was confused.

I see a PS3 console price cut in the near future. $50 price cut in 2009 would be a start followed by an annual $50 PS3 price drop every successive year. Older the console becomes the cheaper manufacturing and development costs become.

I wonder how much it cost to make a PS3 now. I believe they are getting close to make a profit...

IMHO for not poorer teams the interesting part, if it's more than PR spin, is this: The new versions of the Reference Tool "allow advanced game programming and more efficient computer graphics rendering", Sony said.

But as Procrastinato wrote, some teams use more kits than others, in these cases this price cut will be welcome too.

Depends on how multiplayer-oriented your game is, I suppose, but almost every change needs to be tested in a network environment in the latter half of a big project.  That being said, a lot of engineers have to get by with one, and a shared kit, especially in smaller studios.

My point was more that devkits actually do factor into many games' development budgets, not necessarily in terms of overall cost, but more in terms of affordability.  If every engineer, on every multiplayer project, had 2 cheap devkits, the quality of said games would improve, and the budget goes down a little if the kits are really cheap.  Good stuff in general.

Many small studios avoid pitching PS3 projects for budget reasons, and devkit costs are one of the many factors cited.  One more thorn removed is a good thing for the PS3.  The bigger studios see a fairly significant cost benefit from cheap devkits, so they win too.