While the PlayStation Vita has more under it’s hood than any mobile phone on the market, it will face increasing competition from the smartphone market as easy development, cheap devkits and a huge install base has made phones a haven for indie developers. Nintendo may be treating smaller developers rather poorly, but Sony has shown that they are willing to work as hard as they can to recruit indie talent.
Along with spending a whopping $20 million on PSN titles from smaller developers, Sony is hoping to make the Vita an indie-friendly platform, even if it’ll cost them a little bit of money. Rubicon, the developers of the iOS hit Great Little War Game, told NeoGAF members that they already had a Vita version developed and were “just waiting for the unit to go on sale”.
The team then talked about Sony’s plan for smaller indie games on the Vita’s marketplace:
Best of all, Sony are seriously pushing indies forward, so it’s AppStore should start filling up in the same way the iOS one has.
To prove their point, they then continued:
We showed them our game, they liked it loads and thought it a good fit for their machine, so they sent us four kits. Gratis. Just like that.
I know, never happened to me before either, but this has got to be good news for both devs and gamers. Unlike Nintendo, Sony now ‘get it’.
Convincing gamers to buy games that are also available on iOS and Android will be a real challenge for Sony, but providing the content, along with big titles such as Uncharted: Golden Abyss, will undoubtedly be beneficial for the system, and for gamers.
[Via]
