Status Report: the PlayStation Vita, three months in
"Three months, forty titles in. I think it's a fantastic machine. Of course we'd like to sell more of them, and we have key plans to do that," Sony's VP of Product Development and Worldwide Studios, Scott Rohde, told us in an interview during E3 2012. We asked Rohde for a status update on the PlayStation Vita, which launched in North America in late February. Despite less than stellar sales of the handheld and a light upcoming game lineup, Rohde's positivity on the Vita is unshaken.
"We're building a lot of additional titles internally. A lot of good third-party support, you saw that announced at our press conference. So, we think that it's certainly on the rise. Still doing well. Would we like it to do better? Of course. And we're doing everything we can in terms of providing great new content – sixty titles next year – to insure that that will happen," he said.
Despite Rohde's claims, Sony reps hardly mentioned the Vita during the company's E3 2012 press conference. Across an hour and a half, the three-month-old console only warranted three mentions, and just one for a first-party Vita game (PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale). As host, SCEA president and CEO Jack Tretton promised 60 new games on Vita in 2012, but didn't show a single one. Outside of PS All-Stars, the only two Vita games shown were third-party juggernauts Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified and Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation. Both of those are scheduled to launch this year.
"You know that Sly will also have a PlayStation Vita presence. Some things that we're not announcing yet. You saw LittleBigPlanet Vita ... if I can sit here and say you've got PlayStation All-Stars, you've got Sly, you've got Assassin's, you've got Call of Duty, and you've got LittleBigPlanet – that's a pretty nice set to build a foundation on," Rohde added. "And there are a lot of other bigger and smaller things that we just haven't announced yet."
Of the system itself, Rohde said he "wouldn't change anything" about it. As for the launch, however, he said, "If I could go back in time, maybe I would've spread out some of the software releases a little bit." 25 games of varying quality launched alongside the PlayStation Vita this past February, with 10 more in the console's "launch window" (that window is apparently still open, as Silent Hill: Book of Memories has yet to come out).
That latest game from Sony's internal studios for Vita is the critically acclaimed Gravity Rush. PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is planned for a "holiday" launch on PlayStation 3 and Vita.
