Sony, you’ve been taking a beating lately. Sure, there’s the whole sales numbers thing. And sure, you and I both know that the price between the PS3 and Xbox 360 evens out in the end, once the add-ons and subscription fees are out of the way. But that’s not how consumers work. They see the low price up front and go with it. Hidden fees in the backend be damned.

That’s not why I’m writing, though. I’m writing as an indie developer and new media veteran. There’s one hideous fact I must face as I go forward towards the horizon.

The cost to do business with you is egregious.

For people who want to build games, there are plenty of options out there– and I won’t even bring up the Facebook/iPhone/iTouch side of it, since that’s a given that the game industry is slowing coming to terms with… no, it’s the Xbox and Nintendo franchises– both with robust and affordable environments and supporting toolkits that are not outside of the reach of the common man.

For 100 dollars a year, I can join the Xbox creators club with a copy of my Game Studio Express in hand for free. For 2000 dollars a year, I can participate with Nintendo’s WiiWare ecosystem. And companies like Garage Games have the Torque Game Builder, which not only has products specifically for Nintendo and Xbox (and iPhone, heh, pesky Apple), but clear porting paths to each of the consoles.

This is very bad, and you certainly know for whom.

The Playstation 3 environment appears to be so far out of reach that it doesn’t make the list of priorities for a product consideration at first whiff. Personally, I’m not even at the stage to determine which platform is easier to develop for (some Big Guys say Xbox, but I’ll just take their word for it– they have money).

Not even the Playstation 2– your own personal Wii– which would be a developer dream (EyeToy anyone?), is increasingly difficult to reach. The opportunities there could be exciting if we only had access.

Luckily, you have a browser. You can rest assured the irony is not lost on many of us that Microsoft–who makes the Xbox 360– also makes a web browser, and yet there’s no browser on the console. Nintendo figured it out. So did you.

So the porting path to the PS3 is through the browser– a crappy one at that. At least Flash 9 is there, hopefully someone will figure out how to access the camera for all those awesome Papervision Augmented Reality experiments out there.

Yet my optimism is limited, because the browser is horrible. It’s Netfront, not Firefox, not even Google Chrome (which ideally could work since Google+Sony seem to have a good relationship).

Things like high-price tags of the console– that will pass. It’s a luxury brand thing, much like the Apple thing. Things like the fantastic social media engagement the folks on the Playstation blog are engaged in? Good, but not enough to save the day. Playstation Home? Well that’s another article.

Embrace the creatives somewhere less than the rock bottom price of 10 grand. The options aren’t limited out there for us, except when it comes to a platform that some of us want to eagerly support.

Help us, help you.