Unreal Boss Talks Up PS3

And according to Sony there are 10,000 dev kits out there right now.

The months since the underwhelming coming-out party for the PlayStation 3 at E3 have been particularly harsh for Sony. But there are signs that maybe things are turning around.

Mark Rein, head of Unreal developer Epic Games, said that Sony is in a better position now than Microsoft was at the same point in the run up to the debut of the Xbox 360.

"I think Sony's in a good spot with the PlayStation 3," Rein told Eurogamer. "I know we're getting some great results with it back at our house [Epic], so I would expect other developers will be as well."

Rein said that game makers were already taking delivery of final development kits in May - earlier than Microsoft was able to do last year.

Epic isn't the only company sitting with the final tools. Sony's Ryan Bowling told Next Generation this week that the company is actually moving faster than it has ever before.

"To date we have shipped more than 10,000 development systems to 208 companies in 11 countries, the largest number ever for a PlayStation platform," he said.

Bowling also gave assurances that despite the recent departure of Sony's top American developer liaison, game makers were still committed to the PlayStation 3.

"The best and brightest development teams are hard at work creating familiar franchises and original IP for the PS3 including - EA, Konami, Sega, Rockstar, Activision and our own internal studios just to name a few," said Bowling.

Sony is planning to launch the PlayStation 3 worldwide in November. It says it will have around 2 million consoles ready to go on day one.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games