Sony pulls the plug on PS1 home dev Net Yaroze community

Do you remember that cool matte black PlayStation that launched in Japan and Europe for programming geeks to be able to code their own games? That was Net Yaroze, a special debug system that could be connected to a PC to create PS1 games. We’re talking consumer-level dev kits here. Great idea, right? The community has gone on strong for the last twelve years, but now it finally looks to be winding down.

Joystiq reports that the European server for Net Yaroze will be shut down next month. SCEE’s Paul Holman said that they plan to make a copy of the site available for its original members, and that some kind of get-together would be held for the community. 

I’ve got an idea: why doesn’t Sony stick this group on some kind of similar PSP kit?