Sony devoted significant portions of both its February PlayStation 4 announcement and its big E3 conference to its embrace of game developers, including indie game developers of all sizes. These announcements have built good will for Sony with both developers and consumers, but it seems that the company is not only paying lip service to the idea of supporting developers. Sony today revealed that it is reaching out even to developers who have not started developing games yet.

Sony has announced that it is adding the PlayStation 4 to its PlayStationFirst Academic Development Program. PS4 development kits will be available to universities that currently have PlayStation Vita development kits. The company stated that the program supports its goal of supporting indie developers and established studios by educating students in PlayStation development.

“The next generation of Indie developers are now in education,” said Maria Stukoff, head of Academic Development for SCEE. “PlayStationFirst is at the forefront of enabling students to gain future-fit skills for PlayStation console development by providing access to real professional tools”

Sony is also soliciting emails from universities that are interested in getting in on the dev kit program.

“PlayStation 4 is setting the pace for global Indie development,” said Mike Hocking VP at Evolution Studios. “Now is the time for new talent to get skilled up on PS Vita and explore the future of PlayStation game development.”

(via The Sixth Axis)