Vita’s Focus Will Be Indie Titles and Remote Play, Sony Says

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June 19, 2014

Sony is decreasing first-party support for the PlayStation Vita and focusing on indies and Remote Play to provide content, president of Sony Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida has revealed.

In an interview with Polygon, Yoshida explained that Sony's philosophy for both the PS Vita and the PlayStation Portable has always been to recreate a console-quality experience in a handheld. But while this worked on the PSP, Sony ran into difficulties with the PS Vita: "When we launched the Vita with Uncharted, it was amazing; PS3-like quality in your palm, but as time moved on, you are seeing PS4 quality and people's expectations for the graphic fidelity has gone up."

With the dramatic increase in graphical quality on consoles, the focus on handheld visuals and, consequently, the demand for games like Uncharted have gone down. Fortunately for Sony, Yoshida explained, indies have picked up the slack: "It's very fortunate that the indie boom happened and they are providing lots of great content to Vita. I think [indies are] actually the biggest star to help provide great content to Vita going forward."

When asked if this means that Sony will be making fewer first-party Vita titles, Yoshida responded, "I would say, yes, that's correct."

However, Yoshida also reiterated the importance of Remote Play in providing content to the Vita. The system, which streams games from a PlayStation 4 to a Vita, is one of Sony's main selling points for the handheld. The upcoming release of streaming service PlayStation Now will also bring games to the Vita, Yoshida said: "We are super excited about how people are using it. We will continue to provide more utility to Vita as a PS4 companion device as well as PS Now terminal."

Although Sony did not say much about the Vita at this year's E3, this month's sales numbers indicated that the Vita is selling better than in previous months. Recently, Sony also said that there is still a chance that a PS Vita/PS4 bundle will be made available.