Sony Computer Entertainment head honcho, Jim Ryan, has spoken candidly about the reaction to PS Vita’s reportedly poor showing at E3 and the general perception that there’s a lack of decent software titles currently available.
Though games such as Assassin’s Creed, Call Of Duty and LittleBigPlanet were talked about during the Los Angeles event, none of them were playable on the show floor; and during the press conference Sony dedicated only a small amount of time to Vita, instead showcasing new IPs such as The Last Of Us, Beyond: Two Souls and Wonderbook: Book Of Spells.
Speaking with Videogamer.com, Ryan reassures gamers that 2012 for Vita is looking good and says that the lack of time spent talking about Vita at E3 was simply because Sony had multiple platforms to showcase.
“There’s only a finite amount of space at these things [E3], and as a platform holder you have multiple platforms – you just can’t do everything that you’d like to do,” he said.
“We see pretty clearly in the pipeline round about 60 games coming this current year, so there’s good breadth. There’s Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, FIFA, LittleBigPlanet from our own studios. So we look forward and see there’s breadth and there’s depth, and I think having those four IPs on the platform in 2012 puts us in a pretty good place.”
Ryan also says that Vita’s line-up of software was the best of all PlayStation platform launches, and that it’s using these early months in Vita’s life cycle to concentrate on securing the install base.
“We’ve just got to focus on building install base, and that’s what we do,” says Ryan
“We’ve been in the market three months now and we’re perfectly comfortable with the way the thing is doing. We run our lives on a five-to-ten horizon with these things, and we’re looking at our product strategy in those sorts of terms, looking at content strategy in those sorts of terms, looking forward to Christmas 2012. I’m pleased with the software line-up, and I think it’s going to do very well.”
Sony plans to use the platform of GamesCom in August to reveal more of its plans for the future of both PS3 and Vita, and hopefully we’ll also get hands-on with some of those new Vita titles we were tempted with at E3. Based on a survey that we conducted with our readers about why they hadn’t purchased Vita, we’ve also got a good tip to improve the install base of Vita: drop the price.
Ryan also spoke about the future of PlayStation 3, which he says is "only just getting going."