Sony doesn’t want Vita to be “overrun with console ports”

Trying to avoid the same mistakes they made with the PSP

Chris KempSeptember 9, 2012

Despite the PS Vita currently having a somewhat lacklustre line-up of playable titles, Sony is reportedly making an effort to discourage developers from porting console games to the device.

According to Sony’s marketing VP for handhelds and consoles John Koller, the hardware manufacturer wants to avoid making the same mistakes with the Vita as they did with the PSP. They want console quality games on the Vita, but not an inundation of ports as they had with the PSP.

“The issue that happened with PSP is we got overrun with ports,” said Koller. “It became very difficult for us to define what made PSP unique. The content development became a bit unstructured or decentralized, in that we got a lot of content that was on PlayStation 2 and got thrown over to the handheld.”

Koller wants the Vita experience to be unique – not just a trimmed down PS3 experience. “[The Vita] isn’t something consumers play because they’ve left the living room. It’s something that [needs to be] unique, and defines the Vita experience.”

Despite this attitude, much of what we’ve seen for the Vita so far have been basic ports of console titles, with the exception of a few standout games such as Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Resistance: Burning Skies.

However Koller believes things are getting better from here, with major console franchises coming to the party with original games such as Black Ops: Declassified and Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation.

“The messaging is similar [between PSP and PS Vita], but I think the output is going to be quite different,” Koller promises.