Sales for the Vita have been pretty subpar in Japan, and that has reportedly caused many developers to abandon ongoing projects in favor of developing for the 3DS. The news comes as sales for the Vita have not only plummeted of a cliff, but have dropped below sales of the PSP. PS Vita is just now getting a limited launch in the US, and will be launching fully on February 22.
In a report published by Kiyoshi Shin, former head of the Japanese IDGA, on Nikkei, Shin quotes an unnamed source as saying that “major Japanese companies are canceling all projects intended for the Vita and are changing development to the 3DS."
According to Sony, this is not the case. “Extremist quotes like that” is apparently not at all that uncommon for launches of a new product, says Sony VP Worldwide Studios Scott Rohde. "I mean, obviously, there is no way anyone could stand in front of a camera and say that all developers are changing focus from one platform to another, no matter what it is."
Rohde believes that the original reports are “largely exaggerated. I know many, many, many third party developers and publishers are feverishly working on Vita titles, not just for now, but for the foreseeable future."
"There's always going to be the hot platform of the moment in our industry," he says after discussing the potential for the Vita in the US and abroad. "There's always going to be reason to talk about a story like that."
"You can, whatever -- rewind two years ago. Every developer was you knew was selling -- going towards -- I was going to say 'selling their soul', it almost came out -- to go build games for Zynga and the Facebook platform. And there's another time when you see everyone is going to do smaller iPad games or iOS games in general. Then it was PS3, it was 360, it's Vita, it’s 3DS. It's always, constantly changing. It's not something that concerns me whatsoever."
[via Gamasutra]
