Here's something quite intriguing from last week – just in case you missed it. SCEE has ceased the approvals process for PS2 games in Europe, effectively making the machine an open platform for software developers. The announcement was made by developer relations manager George Bain at the Casual Connect conference in Kiev. It seems Sony is mainly targeting regional developers in countries like India and Russia which will now be able to make, "low-development cost titles and release them in their market".

It could be quite a big deal for the indie development community too, though the ramifications are not yet entirely clear...

Presumably copy protection will still be in place, meaning that it won't be possible to distribute games on DVD-R discs, or via download. Oh and potential developers will also need a devt kit, which could set them back $10,250 – although Bain says a 500 quid debug unit would be fine for casual units. Perhaps the next step will be for Sony to make all its PS2 libraries and SDKs freely available to the bedroom coding community?

Still, it's an interesting development, which runs starkly counter to the company's treatment of the PSP homebrew scene, and recalls the days of Net Yaroze. Of course, it could just as easily mean a huge amount of unregulated shovelware/porn shoved out by low-end distributors, sniffing around the machine's vast installed user base…