Sony refutes claims of Vita devs jumping ship for 3DS
Reports "largely exaggerated" says senior VP of Worldwide studios, Scott Rohde
Rumours of PlayStation Vita developers abandoning the platform in favour of working on 3DS titles, which surfaced via an anonymous quote in Japan's Nikkei, have been refuted by Sony's senior VP of Worldwide Studios Scott Rohde.
Speaking to Gamasutra, Rohde said that the report was inaccurate, although admitted that there will always be a fluctuating platform preference in a changing market.
"I did not see that quote, but you see extremist quotes like that all the time," said Rohde when asked about the Nikkei article, which was written by the head of the Japanese branch of the IGDA, Kiyoshi Shin.
The unattributed quote, said to be from a senior member of the Japanese development community, was unequivocal in its assessment.
"Major Japanese companies are canceling all projects intended for the Vita and are changing development to the 3DS," the source claimed.
"There's always going to be the hot platform of the moment in our industry, there's always going to be reason to talk about a story like that."
Scott Rohde, Senior VP Sony Worldwide Studios.
"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," countered Rohde continuing that the report was "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," Rodhe told Gamasutra. "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."
Sony's platform could certainly use a boost. Australia's three largest retailers have announced that they won't sell Vita, whilst the system continues to struggle on home turf in Japan.