Third-party support is crucial for any gaming console, and Sony says it's already hitting new milestones in that field with the yet-to-be-released PlayStation 3.

　　Sony reps told GameSpot that with almost four months left until the PS3's worldwide launch, it has already shipped out more than 10,000 PS3 development kits. That's more than the total number of development systems for any other PlayStation platform, according to the publisher. As for who is working with those kits, Sony said it shipped them out to 208 companies in 11 different countries--also all-time highs for the PlayStation brand.

　　Sony's mass SDK push puts it in a good position for the PS3's November debut, according to Epic Games' Mark Rein. In an interview with Eurogamer, he mentioned that developers were beginning to receive finished PS3 hardware around the time of the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2006 in May. Though that might seem late, Rein said Sony was ahead of where its archrival Microsoft was the previous year, pointing out that developers did not have finished Xbox 360 SDKs at E3 2005.