Kotick: Vita is “really something incredible”

In a recent interview Bobby Kotick, chief executive and president of Activision, praised the new PlayStation Vita, but questioned its place in a market crowded with smartphones. He also spoke about the opportunities presented by Nintendo’s Wii U.

Speaking to the Guardian Kotick was clearly impressed by Sony’s handheld.

“It is a fantastic piece of hardware. Technically, we're super excited about what we can do on it, it's really something incredible,” he said.

“The question is, where is the market? I think the pricing was surprisingly affordable, the product itself is really great – so the questions is, is there a need in the marketplace for a very specialised portable device of that capability?”

He was also keen to talk about Activision’s plans for the Wii U, and admitted the company had struggled with the Wii’s lack of performance.

“From a development perspective, having a Nintendo device that is on parity with the other hardware from a graphics perspective was really necessary,” he said. “For the kinds of games we create, it was becoming very difficult for us to support the Wii with the expectations that our gamers have.”

He wouldn’t confirm Activision’s plans for bringing core titles to the Wii U, but he did confirmed the company were already working on titles, possibly for the online arena.

“Without telling you our title plans, it's now more possible to do deep rich multiplayer games – we need more clarity from Nintendo on the online capabilities, but we've had development systems for a while now and we're very enthusiastic about it.”

Kotick was also in the news yesterday when his investor group failed to purchase social networking site MySpace.