There is an excellent company in my country (Serbia) which specialises in developing MCU development boards. These boards all include the following :
-In Circuit Debugger (ICD)
-Simulation components (LEDs, LCDs, 7seg displays, pull up/down buttons, keypads, thermometers, A/D,D/A.
-Easy to test interfaces (for MCU-PC interaction) such as USB, PS/2, parrallel port, ethernet, etc
-Ability to program various families of MCUs (but for only one type, eg PICs). They usually support around five different types of MCUs per board.