In a rather surprising turn of events, Sony has decided to support indie developers on a pretty unprecedented level by lending out development kits for their PS Vita handheld. This is surprising and unprecedented because dev kits usually cost a studio many thousands of dollars to purchase individually, and while Sony expects to get these kits returned when studios are done with them, to just give them out at the drop of a hat is pretty abnormal behavior.
That said, it certainly shows a solid commitment on Sony's behalf in their belief that the indie dev scene is a burgeoning one, although that's not exactly hard to accept considering the success of games like Minecraft and Super Meat Boy. By getting indie devs to release products on their hardware, Sony will get their fingers comfortably inside the sweet meats of any lucrative games that arise from the developers they support. The meager profit they would stand to see from selling the PSV dev kits are rather negligible compared to a cut of the profit from 50,000 units of an indie game.
via Eurogamer