Sony: Economics for AAA games ‘don’t work’ on PS Vita

Turning to streaming PS3, PS4 games to bring larger experiences to the portable

The PlayStation Vita is awesome and it has lots of great games in the pipeline — particularly on the indie front. But it’s still selling poorly. And console-quality experiences like Killzone: Mercenary and Uncharted: Golden Abyss are few and far between.

“The economics simply don’t work with the traditional process. We have to do something different to get AAA games on Vita,” Don Mesa, Sony Computer Entertainment’s product planning & platform software innovation director, explained in response to a fan’s inquiry regarding the lack of big budget Vita games.

“We accomplished it to a certain degree by making PS4 games work on Vita via remote play,” Mesa continued. “PS Now will be another way, streaming PS3 games on Vita. I can’t wait until PS Now is out on Vita – I hope you’ll try out the experience and let me know what you think.”

Well, that’s unfortunate. The Vita may be struggling, but tethering it to the PS4 doesn’t see like the answer. The Vita is a fantastic system in its own right — not some $200+ peripheral. Perhaps the current install base is underwhelming and can’t support the development costs of grandiose projects, but things won’t change if nothing’s ever done.

New Slimmer, Lighter PS Vita Model Out Today [PlayStation Blog via Siliconera]