All clues point toward Ubi, but there is something bugging me.
- Ubi works closely with Sony recently, so I would think Shahid and his crew knew about their list of games in development long time ago. But the big amazing game in question was unexpected; they only found about it recently from an internal email.
Perhaps. But to elaborate a bit more, this is why I'm pretty certain he's referring to Ubisoft.
Starting from what I think are two reasonable assumptions:
-Even disregarding the current state of Japanese third parties' support for the platform, he probably would have limited access to information about what they're planning.
-Given Vita's sales over the past year, it's unlikely that any of the Western third parties that shunned Vita in 2012 (2K, Bethesda) would get on board now.
That leaves us with the Western third parties that supported the platform last year: EA, Activision, WBIE, and Ubisoft.
EA: Based on their last financial results, seems to be completely done with Vita (and Wii U, and 3DS) beyond the seemingly contractually obligated FIFA.
Activision: Possible given how Declassified sold, but they never seem to have been even close to fully on board Vita (they haven't released or announced anything else for the platform before or since), and rumors suggest that Declassified only existed in the first place due to Sony moneyhats.
WBIE: Still on board with Vita, but it's not clear what they have left to announce at this point; they've already announced two Lego games and a spinoff of their most popular console franchise (Blackgate).
Ubisoft: Confirmed to have multiple Vita titles in development as of February; still haven't announced any of them.
I obviously can't be absolutely certain it's Ubisoft, but I'll be fairly surprised if it isn't.
Well I don't think Ubisoft would be all that surprising to Shahid and Tony Clark since, as you said, they have already stated multiple games are coming. They are sort of expected now.
Maybe! But that interview was on a fairly obscure Dutch website and didn't get a ton of pickup from more widely read gaming sites, so I'm not sure either of them would necessarily have been aware of it.