14 DAY TRIAL // Sony’s Worldwide Studios President, Shuhei Yoshida, is surprised by the fact that third-party developers are ignoring the PlayStation Vita handheld, saying that they’re missing out on a great portable platform.
The PlayStation Vita came out at the beginning of the year and, while it was supported both by Sony and by third-party developers like Ubisoft at that point in time, things have slowed down in recent months.
Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida is surprised by the fact that most external developers are ignoring the Vita, as he believes, according to Gamasutra, that the “PS Vita is the best hardware to bring a very immersive game experience onto portable.”
Yoshida understands, however, that it’s trickier for developers to support lots of platforms, especially since the mobile space is filled with a variety of devices, not just the PlayStation Vita.
"In retrospect, there are so many options for publishers now that we cannot take it for granted that our new platform would be supported by third parties, like [it would've been] many years ago. There are limited resources that third party publishers have, and they have to diversify into new areas constantly; that's a challenge to get the support that we want.”
Sony won’t back down, however, as Yoshida emphasizes that it’s doing everything it can in order to convince third-party studios to bring games onto the Vita. What’s more, once more people start buying the Vita, other developers will realize the potential of the platform.
"We've been working harder with our third party relations department to secure more content for PS Vita," he added. "We are confident that we have the right hardware platform that we have with PS Vita. As we can expand our install base and articulate what works really well on the platform as compared to others, it will get easier for us to be able get support from third parties.”
The Vita will receive a few big games this holiday season, culminating with Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation and Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified, so it’s going to be interesting to see how these two titles perform.