S-kay

"Well, apparently neither do you. The cost of a dev kit is less than a drop in the game budget bucket. $2000 or $20,000 makes no difference when you have to pay $500,000 in salaries + $??? for marketing + $??? for publishing... and so on."

Yes, in this current generation of consoles. However, with the advent of online content delivery this will change. It is perfectly reasonable for a small development team to develop a game and distribute it via one of these online content delivery systems. Such as Nintendo Virtual Console, X-box Live Arcade, PS3 Hub or Steam.

You need only look at the success of games such as Geometry Wars or Darwinia that independent developers have an opportunity in this new market that's arriving.

Of course, these independent developers won't be able to offer the depth or perhaps the asthetic polish of big developers but do they need to? They need only turn a profit to survive and succeed.