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.