In a recent press release, Sony officials have announced that the company’s tools and middleware licensing program will begin on October 1, 2005.

Tools and middleware companies involved in the development of tools and middleware for Sony’s Playstation 3 platform will be offered the licensing program, as well as technical and marketing support from Sony to assist these companies with product promotion.

Sony has released a list of the potential tools and middleware licensees, which reads as follows (in alphabetical order):

• Alias Systems
• Autodesk
• Avid Technology
• CRI Middleware
• Emergent Game Technologies
• Epic Games
• Firelight Technologies
• Havok
• Interactive Data Visualization
• Metrowerks Games Team
• Pixelux Entertainment
• RAD Game Tools
• SiliconStudio
• Web Technology Corp

Sony seems keen to ensure that the Playstation 3 has a more complete initial set of development tools than the Playstation 2, which many game developers claimed was difficult to program due to a lack of development tools.

Sony’s recent acquisition of SN Systems means that it will start providing ProDG development tools to game developers as of October, along with Playstation 3 SDKs.

In addition to the ProDG tools, Sony has confirmed that the Ageia PhysX SDK physics library, Unreal Engine 3 engine and Havok Complete XS physics engine will be made available to game developers in October.