Sony has admitted that it "totally under-represented" its PS Vita handheld during its E3 2012 conference on Monday.
As our Sony E3 conference report pointed out, all Sony showed for Vita in terms of games was Assassin's Creed Liberation, PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale, and a logo for Call Of Duty Black Ops: Declassified.
Shuhei Yoshida, head of Sony Worldwide Studios, told VG247 that, despite there being 25 Vita games playable on the E3 show floor, the company had deliberately chosen not to make a big fuss about it during the conference, because it was trying to keep its event as short as possible.
"It was our fault for not spending enough time on PS Vita content," Yoshida admitted. "We have 25 games on the show floor, playable during E3. And many of them are fantastic-looking games. We could have shown more during the press conference.
"The PR team's one big focus was to make the conference shorter this year. We have been criticised for having a long conference in the past. So this year's focus was [to] make it very compact and impactful. We [had] to cover PS3, PS3-exclusive titles, thirdparty partnerships, PS Move, and new initiatives on PS Mobile and network services.
"If you really look for new information on PS Vita games coming out this year and early next year, we totally under-represented that."
All of which is fine - and Yoshida points to LittleBigPlanet, Jet Set Radio and Soundshapes as titles that could have been included in the press conference - but Sony's show on Monday was anything but compact and impactful.
There was the overlong Wonderbook demo, and the extended looks at Far Cry 3 and Assassin's Creed III, two Ubisoft titles that are anything but PS3 exclusive, their inclusion justified by exclusive DLC. There was surely plenty of scope for those to be cut down, making room for Sony's plans for Vita.
We'll bring you more news on Vita's E3 presence as we get it. To help keep track of it all, we suggest you bookmark our E3 2012 topic page.
Comments
10I suspected that Vita would be the key for Sony this year--a place they could publicize to keep people from feeling let down as the PS3 aged. They appear to have disagreed and though the best place for Vita was the closet--behind your dead aunt's old coats.
They won't beat Nintendo on the portable scene so I can only imagine most resources are still going into PS4 not vita.
I'm not sure why I can only ever double post here.
what are those 25 games for vita ? , because you know, i would like some games besides gravity rush ^^
i would love a E3 Vita special... previews, release dates and so on
This is why I avoided Vita - I bought a PSP and was very let down by a lack of quality titles, or even some motivation from Sony to expand on its market share - it just died a quick death.
The state of the Playstation Store speaks volumes for me - under-utilised, little consideration for consumers beyond pointless fecking LBP avatars. It could have, and should have been so much more.
I'll believe the hype on any of those 25 games when I see them. I'm getting worried that the Vita catalogue will just be B-Studio riffs on PS3 titles. Even titles like Touch my Katamari didn't approach the scale or scope of their PS2 counterparts.
Sony should have just made a dedicated portable PS1/PS2 for playing content on PSN and raided their back catalogue, rather than have a half-arsed stab at a new handheld and then get distracted by phones and tablets.
Is it out yet?
To me, the vita looks like the best handheld console out there. The problem is I can buy a brand new PS3 for less. I can't justify spending that much money on a handheld unless its also a phone & a computer (which is why iPhone gets away with it).
The thing is, it COULD be great if they follow through and support it. The Kinect is awful but you've got to admire Microsofts committment to bashing us over the head with it. It will never do well, but they've managed to flog millions of the thing.
Sony seems to expect the quality of their hardware to do the talking but that's not how people buy electronics these days. They don't buy it because it's useful, or because they really need it. And they certainly don't buy it because it's the best, or best value for money.
They buy it because marketing has made them think they really, really want it, even if they're not really sure why. Then make sure it's at a price that allows them NOT to think about how much money they're spending on something they don't really need.
They'd be smart to capitalise more on cross play. Infer that any game you get for your PS3 will be great but you'll be missing out on so much if you don't have a Vita to get the most out of it.
Stuttering start for the Vita..... will it follow the same slow burning progress the PSP did? It sold reasonably well in the end, even if it didn't ever stand a chance against the DS in terms of sales.