Sony believes that 'console-quality' marketing will succeed for PS Vita where it failed for PSP
- Posted September 8th, 2012 at 12:42 EDT by Kyle Prahl
- 4 Comments
One of the biggest selling points for PlayStation Portable was, according to Sony, the ability to play console-quality games on-the-go. In essence, having a PSP was like taking your PS2 with you - more gaming goodness, more connectivity, and most of the hardware necessary to deliver graphics on par with the PS2.
Unfortunately, PSP history shows an alarming number of rushed ports. Third-party developers leveraged the PSP's power with unique experiences less and dumped slightly-worse versions of console games on it more. It's a notable low point in the PSP's lifecycle, so it's strange that Sony has more-or-less adopted the same strategy for marketing PlayStation Vita - it's a console-quality piece of hardware that you can take anywhere.
Speaking with Gamasutra, Sony marketing VP John Koller admits that the message is similar, but believes that Sony's communication with developers behind the scenes will prevent the same woes. "The issue that happened with PSP is we got overrun with ports," he said. ". . . we got a lot of content that was on PlayStation 2 and got thrown over to the handheld."
To avoid the same situation with PS Vita, Koller says that Sony is actively pushing publishers and developers to leverage the system's power for new experiences, even among existing franchises. "Follow what Ubisoft is doing with Assassin's Creed. Follow what Activision is doing with Call of Duty," Koller explains. "The messaging is similar [between PSP and PS Vita], but I think the output is going to be quite different."
What do you think of Vita's library of games so far? Is there a risk of too many console ports? Drop a comment below.
Related Content
Comments
-
J Aslak Rajala
- 7:04pm EDT - September 8th, 2012
- 1
My only comment is that there are no games on the Vita at the moment. But the ports are high quality, I never missed my HDTV while playing Rayman Origins on the Vita.
-
stealth20k
- 8:08pm EDT - September 8th, 2012
- 2
Actually the psp had one of the best libraries of all time.
Better than the ps3. Yeah it did have ports. But it also had the best versions of older games like star ocean 1, or ff tactics but it also had amazing exclusives like crisis core and type zero
the hilarious thing is the vita is 99 percent console port which is why it will never even do 1 tenth what the psp did in any region
yeah
-
Jack Rudrum
- 4:41am EDT - September 9th, 2012
- 3
the vita isn't 99% console port? I can think of few games that are on ps3 and vita and the same on both (psn games not counted) and several of those that are, are part of cross buy so it doesn't really matter, the new nfs will be one but as the vita version is looking pretty much identical to ps3 version I am really not fussed and it has extra content
-
Trenton Misfits Ledford
- 4:49pm EDT - September 9th, 2012
- 4
I don't think the vita going to haVe a lot of ports. All the upcoming games are not port. I think only playstation battle royal is a port
This will permanently ban this user and delete all associated comments. This action is irreversible, are you SURE you want to do this?!


