Those of you brilliant enough to have spotted the rubbish pun from the stand-first of this news story will have noticed that SPOnG is somewhat sceptical of claims surfacing over the weekend regarding programming for the PlayStation 3.

“We're very much aware of the need to balance between innovation in architecture and the ability to leverage that innovation," said Peter Hofstee, a researcher in IBM's Systems and Technology division, to ZDNet during an IBM press event. "The learning curve for this platform should be significantly better than previous ones.”

However, developers will no doubt remember similar claims coming from Sony and its partners regarding the Emotion Engine at a similar phase during the emergence of the PlayStation 2, little of which contained any substance. All but the most dedicated coders were presented with an almost unprogrammable machine with little or no tangible coded support.

Hofstee continued, “We think it's going to be a much more seamless and speedy process for developers using these workstations. Convergence between what we think of as supercomputing and what we use in the entertainment space. We've created something that is very flexible. Having a more generic architecture will allow people to do new things.”

We’ll bring you first-round PlayStation 3 dev-kit feedback in the coming months.