Porting Games to PlayStation Vita Is Meaningless, Street Fighter Producer Says

Porting full pledged console games to new platforms, like the PlayStation Vita, is meaningless, at least according to Street Fighter X Tekken producer Yoshinori Ono, who said his team at Capcom is more focused on adding new features to the Vita version of the game.

We've been hearing quite a lot about the PlayStation Vita recently, with Sony sharing plenty of details about the handheld device and the games that will appear for it, not to mention information about the battery life.

Now, Yoshinori Ono, the producer of the upcoming Street Fighter X Tekken, shared a bit of insight into adapting the title for the portable console, and how it's more important to use the features of the device instead of worrying about bringing all the systems employed on full pledged consoles like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

"A lot of people, when they're porting to new hardware, especially a handheld, they'll talk about how it's difficult because of memory restrictions or speed or things like that, and I haven't found that to be the case," he said, via Joystiq.

"We've been putting less energy into the porting process itself and more energy into adding additional features, because we don't want to do a straight-up port -- that's silly and meaningless," he added.

One particular challenge is the rear touch panel of the Vita, which allows gamers to control certain systems via gestures made on the back of the device, not just in the front, via buttons or the 5-inch touchscreen.

"The rear panel presents kind of a challenge for us, because when you're playing a fighting game, given the button configuration you're going to have your index fingers on the top and your thumbs on the front. We don't want a situation where you're accidentally throwing shoryukens because you moved your ring finger in the middle of a bout," Ono said.

The Street Fighter X Tekken producer did admit that he's not sure what features of the game will make use of the touch panel just yet.

The PlayStation Vita is out on December 17, in Japan, and early next year in Europe and North America.