As one of the biggest supporters of the PlayStation Vita, FuturLab has titles like Velocity Ultra, Coconut Dodge; Revitalised, Surge, and much more available to download on the handheld. So, it’s no surprise they recently tweeted that they are really excited for Killzone: Mercenary (expect a PSLS preview this week), “PS Vita is just the place to be,” and “If you hate games, don’t buy a PS Vita.”
FuturLab aren’t the only indie studio out there, as TVL caught up with a handful of developers, including Dave Pollard of Eiconic Games (Total Recoil), who said, “Of the ‘big 3’, Sony has done far more to make devs feel welcome on their platforms and over the years they’ve gradually made it easier and easier to work with their hardware.” This was in response to a question that asked what appealed them to put their games on PlayStation, with Stewart Gilray of Just Add Water (Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD) adding, “There’s nothing magical about it, it’s the simple fact that Sony welcomes third-party self-publishing from anyone, not just big AAA publishers.”
After Dave said they’ve “been overwhelmed by the positive response we’ve had so far from the PSN community,” Graham Smith of Drinkbox Studios (Guacamelee!) added that “the Vita has been doing particularly well for us, even with its install base being smaller than PS3, it seems that the people Vita’s are hungry for new games.”
Mirroring the thoughts of many PSLS staff members, Stewart talked about what he thinks could be done at retail for the PlayStation Vita:
Dropping the price a little… retail will NOT market a device if they feel they won’t be selling software for it. As they’ll believe that it’s taking business away from them, if it’s all selling Digitally. So perhaps making the price extremely attractive will resolve that, I’m not sure.
Looking at the future, Eiconic Games’ next title has the Vita as the lead platform and Ripstone Games will be supporting it further, but Drinkbox is “still working out what’s next for us after the Guacamelee! DLC”, though Graham thinks “that we would love to continue to support the PlayStation and Vita.” As for Just Add Water, Stewart said, “At this time there isn’t [plans], but that’s because we don’t actually know what is after [our current projects] anyway, but we will keep supporting the Vita as best we can.”
Of course, we wouldn’t be able to properly do a post a PlayStation Vita post involving indies without mentioning Shahid Ahmad, who gave the latest update on Spelunky for PlayStation Vita by saying, “Hoping it will be August. It’s looking very, very good though. Derek and Blit have really polished.”
Do you hate games? Let us know in the comments below.
