Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s (SCEE) Strategic Content guru and proclaimed indie backer Shahid Kamal Ahmad told PlayStation Universe (PSU) that we can expect to see more top flight titles on PlayStation Vita.
In an exclusive interview with PSU, Shahid was asked whether the future of Vita lies mainly in indie development or whether we’ll see more triple-A titles. Shahid first off defended the influx of indie games on Sony’s latest handheld platform, but then said that more big budget games are on their way and will be more frequent if Vita’s sales figures continue to rise.
“First thing is, indie games are getting better and better all the time,” said Shahid. “The second thing is there are more top flight titles coming. Football Manager recently came out which is absolutely amazing. It’s the first title as far as I’m aware that allows you to cross save your PC game and continue where you left off on Vita which is something people have dreamt of for a long time with Football Manager."
He also spoke about Japanese role-playing games, revealing that we can expect to see a lot more coming to Vita in the future.
“Tales of Hearts is coming to the West, so there are a lot of JRPG fans that are absolutely delighted about Namco Bandai bringing that over, and there will be more,” he said.
Shahid then went to talk about low Vita sales in its first couple of years, but says things are picking up and if it continues to do so we can expect more mainstream developers to invest in big budget games.
“Frankly, we haven’t sold as many Vitas as we would have liked to have sold and the economic reality is that it costs a lot of money to make a triple-A game, and so they’re going to be few and far between until the numbers go up,” said Shahid.
“The good news is the numbers are going up. There’s a lot of love for the machine. It is selling. It is doing pretty well, I would say, all things considered, because the signs last year weren’t good for us. But numbers are going up this year, which is really good news. With people like SEGA, people like Namco coming to the platform with some of their top flight games–that’s a healthy sign as well, and I expect that to continue.”
In the interview, Shahid covered a wealth of topics, including Project Morpheus, how social media has changed the way video games are discussed and marketed, and just how cool his job is! The full interview will be live on PSU.com shortly in our latest episode of PlayStation Unchained.