From Playstation Blog:
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The games industry is always on the look-out for new, talented engineers and programmers who understand how the hardware works under the hood. However, it isn't possible to buy a PlayStation development kit at your local computer store and development for the PlayStation has remained a mystery, even to very interested individuals. It gives me great pleasure to unveil the mystery and announce the PlayStation-edu program! We expect this program to be a great tool to teach students about the PlayStation platforms.

PlayStation-edu is a program for universities and colleges to get access to PS2 and PSP development kits...the same ones that professional developers use to make the games you love to play. You get the development software, the hardware, and the SDK to learn and experiment with. SCEA wants to make sure that students who are graduating from college are ready to program on PlayStation hardware and that means getting it into your hands.

PlayStation-edu is not a general game creation program (sorry artists and designers). It is for computer science and engineering students who want to understand how the hardware works in the PlayStation consoles. Schools which teach game programming or computer architecture can use the development kits in their classes. Participants will get demo code and samples, as well as documentation about how things work. We want the dev kits used in the classroom! Students in PlayStation-edu will have access to our support web site where they can talk with other students in the program on our forums.

Of course, there are a couple caveats (aren't there always?): Yes, your school will need to sign some legal agreements with us and yes, "get access to" means that your school will need to purchase the hardware.

For more information and application information, educators may contact me (Mark Danks) at applications@psp-edu.scedev.net. Only requests for applications from qualified school representatives will be responded to, so any students reading this should have their teacher submit the request. Also, this is only for universities and colleges, so high school students will need to wait a few years.
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