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"Indies should definitely jump onto the PS Vita" - Retro City Rampage Developer

Anybody any idea what happened with the "Playstation Mobile"-platform on Vita?

At the beginning I heard a lot of news about it, but lately it's very quiet on that front...

Is it up and running, and any good games in there?
 
D

Deleted member 125677

Unconfirmed Member
We need the notable PSN games to be ported to Vita

Super Meat Boy
Fez
Limbo
Outland
Joe Danger
Journey
Braid
Castle Crashers

Ehm, Since when were SMB and Fez PSN games?
 

kerrak

Member
Vita has a distinctive positioning and indies should exploit it.

-The store isn't crowded.
-Vita users embrace the digital model.
-Potential market isn't measured with user base. It's measured with potential buyers of your product. In this respect, and compared to other systems, Vita user base is not as small as in pure "units sold" terms.
-Sony is open to indies.
-Programming is not particularly hard, as seen from multiple interviews with developers.
-The feel of an "indie game" machine is already sticking in the minds of many avid gamers.
-And of course the obvious ones, portability, input methods, build quality

Of course it lacks a big amount of user base that could potentially increase the sales to homerun status.
 

bobbytkc

ADD New Gen Gamer
Anybody any idea what happened with the "Playstation Mobile"-platform on Vita?

At the beginning I heard a lot of news about it, but lately it's very quiet on that front...

Is it up and running, and any good games in there?
Some are pretty good, but almost all are not very attractive. I think they are hampered somewhat by the strict resource requirements, so they can't leverage the hardware.
 

Twinduct

Member
Us too, soon! :O

Has Sony shared any indication if their going to expand the PSM market to more regions yet? I mean I'm sure they said 'ever expanding' .. but looking for that 'subtle' confirmation :p

PSM has potential ... it just seems to be in limbo when it comes to actually rolling it out :/
Anyway goodluck and hope the best for your game and the team.
 

Opiate

Member
This is very good news for the Vita if it represents a repeatable phenomena. When you're in the Vita's position, the best possible approach is to build from the ground up; you aren't going to start with major multimillion dollar projects. You start from the bottom, and if that proves successful the games gradually work their way up the ladder.

This is a lesson Nintendo desperately needed to learn for the Wii, but didn't.
 

Ouren

Member
Some are pretty good, but almost all are not very attractive. I think they are hampered somewhat by the strict resource requirements, so they can't leverage the hardware.

The bit about unattractiveness has nothing to do with resource restrictions. See: old games. I can also tell you that as a developer, we are able to do everything we wanted to do in terms of look and feel for our games. It's purely a matter of polish, time spent, and who's on your team.

Has Sony shared any indication if their going to expand the PSM market to more regions yet? I mean I'm sure they said 'ever expanding' .. but looking for that 'subtle' confirmation :p

PSM has potential ... it just seems to be in limbo when it comes to actually rolling it out :/
Anyway goodluck and hope the best for your game and the team.

Thank you!
As far as the regional question, I'm not fully equipped to answer, as I don't work at Sony. :p
Europe I know is sort of a nightmare for a unified single legal release in the region, so a lot of smaller games may just not show up there. (See: P4A)
In response to things rolling out, I know that we're putting two things out, and that I know a few other teams are doing things along side us as well. There's almost nothing holding developers back from making a game, or even porting games from XNA projects to PSM. The IDE stuff, and even the packaged libraries are similar enough that you should be able to do a find and replace in your code for some of it.

Thanks again. Viva la handhands!
 

Carl

Member
Better on PSN than XBLA and better on Vita than PS3 is pretty amazing. Vita owners must be really desperate for games... Vita has no games!

Anyway yeah, happy for him. Would be happy to see Vita become an Indie games machine
 

B-Genius

Unconfirmed Member
This is greatness, but I think many of you are selling the Vita community a little short. We aren't just snapping up every gamebecause it's there. We're the same garters that build high end PCs, and argue about games with you guys.

I know it's a meme that the Vita "has no games," but many of us that own one are a bit more informed about what's on the system. Between Vita, PSP, and PS1 games, I have over 50 games for my system. A mix between retail and digital, and Indies. I'm not new to Indies games, not by a long shot. I have Steam and PSN catalogue that's pushing a hundred plus games long. The problem is, I'm simply not at home long enough to play any of them. But I do have 2 hours to kill each day on the bus to and from work. So when a game like RCR (which I actually enjoy), Life of Pixel, etc, land on the Vita, I buy it, not for some ki d of desperation for something to play, bit because I'll actually be able to play it at all. Sure, I could buy it on Steam or PSN, but it'd just end up I'm my massive Steam and PSN backlog. I actually play the 50+ games on my Vita, even though I'm often juggling them (I'm currently cycling through sessions of AC3 Lib, Corpse Party, Sly TiT, Knytt Underground, Rocketbirds, RCR, and quite a few PS1 titles I've never played like Vagrant Story and Legend of Mans).


Anyway, the point is that the Vita community isn't as pathetically starved for games as we're often led to believe on gaf. The year 1 library of the handheld, objectively speaking, has been very impressive. Not everybody blows through games in a few days, or buys every game day one. There are still a few Vita titles from last year I've yet to pick up like Zero Escape and Persona 4.

This influx of Indies debs is fantastic news. I own Terraria on Steam, but I plan on buying the PSN version, and if they ever make a Vita version, I'll be snagging that one as well. I'm really glad to hear that, even with such a small install base, Indies debs can make some money. That's really great news.
Very nice. Reading your second paragraph is like seeing my own jumbled thoughts put into words =)

I also have Terraria on Steam, and as much as I love the concept, I never play it.
If it was on Vita, and had a similar online capabilities, I would snatch it up in no time.

I think the main reason people say "Vita has no games" is because most of us are "just" playing ports and indies at the moment. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if we start seeing more original, fully-fledged titles like Gravity Rush and Soul Sacrifice, we can surely expect to kiss this unfortunate meme goodbye.
 

DiscoJer

Member
Some are pretty good, but almost all are not very attractive. I think they are hampered somewhat by the strict resource requirements, so they can't leverage the hardware.

From what I've gathered from reading the developer forums, they are restricted to using 96 megabytes of memory, and the overall performance is just really, really awful (as it's not running natively on the Vita, but on a Virtual Machine)

This thread has some benchmarks from programmers.

http://community.eu.playstation.com...ith-PSS-SDK/m-p/16018189/highlight/true#M1106

Going by my test figures alone it would appear that in terms of raw computational power (atleast when using a single core with a Release binary), the Vita VM does seem to be running much slower than the Android devices. The Xperia Play runs roughly twice as fast as the Vita and the Tablet S runs about 3 times as fast as the Vita.
 

bobbytkc

ADD New Gen Gamer
From what I've gathered from reading the developer forums, they are restricted to using 96 megabytes of memory, and the overall performance is just really, really awful (as it's not running natively on the Vita, but on a Virtual Machine)

This thread has some benchmarks from programmers.

http://community.eu.playstation.com...ith-PSS-SDK/m-p/16018189/highlight/true#M1106

That hasn't been my experience playing though. When I was playing on my HTC One X, a pretty capable phone, the framerate when using the flamethrower in super crate box absolutely tanks, but it was rock solid on the Vita. So what's up with that?
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Don't forget CasteStorm by Zen Studios!

http://www.castlestormgame.com/

Why would a Microsoft Game studio title be on Vita?

That's great but it's not as if it's facing any form of stiff competition on the PS Vita.

Thats an urban myth that seriously needs to die. In a comparable time period, Vita had MORE released games than the 3DS with a 5% higher scoring average.

This whole Indies getting Indies on board-thing should be totally a movement that goes viral, haha. :)
GET THAT FTL DEVELOPER ON BOARD.
 

DiscoJer

Member
That hasn't been my experience playing though. When I was playing on my HTC One X, a pretty capable phone, the framerate when using the flamethrower in super crate box absolutely tanks, but it was rock solid on the Vita. So what's up with that?

I guess it's VM isn't so well optimized, either. A game like Super Crate Box really shouldn't tax a Gameboy Advance

Thats an urban myth that seriously needs to die. In a comparable time period, Vita had MORE released games than the 3DS with a 5% higher scoring average.

This whole Indies getting Indies on board-thing should be totally a movement that goes viral, haha. :)
GET THAT FTL DEVELOPER ON BOARD.

Except review scores don't equal desirability. The most comparable game to RCR is Grand Theft Auto, which is absent from the Vita. If there had been a Vita GTA (like there was for the PSP), would it have sold as well?
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Thanks, man... :)

Get Surge as well! Easily the best PSM game:
surge.jpg
 

mclem

Member
This is very good news for the Vita if it represents a repeatable phenomena. When you're in the Vita's position, the best possible approach is to build from the ground up; you aren't going to start with major multimillion dollar projects. You start from the bottom, and if that proves successful the games gradually work their way up the ladder.

This is a lesson Nintendo desperately needed to learn for the Wii, but didn't.

Mmmm, I think they're *getting*, there, with their improvements to eShop policy on the 3DS and Wii U, and we're hearing similar stories to RCR about Gunman Clive - but everyone's a wee bit tentative, it seems. Understandable, given the history, but Nintendo really could do with some sort of initiative to encourage indie devs further onto their platform.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Except review scores don't equal desirability. The most comparable game to RCR is Grand Theft Auto, which is absent from the Vita. If there had been a Vita GTA (like there was for the PSP), would it have sold as well?

I never said that. I simply said that the competition digital games are having are... drumroll... digital games since they usually cater to a similar audience, ESPECIALLY in the case of the Vita where people seem to be very open to try other genres than just their typical favourite genre. This is also promoted by Sony through PS+ which gives people free games of genres they might not have tried, and therefore again open up the customer to more genres.

RCR's competition was every other game on the Vita store and there are quite a few of them. Having a GTA on Vita would mean a higher install base since that is basically a system seller, so chances are RCR would have sold even more to people looking for a 2D GTA once they are done with RCR.

I also believe that this is one of the reasons why Indie games are doing as good on Vita as they do, the userbase seems to be very open-minded about the games they try/buy.

SMB never. Wouldn't be surprised if Fez lands on PSN this year. Polytron retweeted Nick Suttner's tweet inviting devs to PSN.

Could you link me?
 
I never said that. I simply said that the competition digital games are having are... drumroll... digital games since they usually cater to a similar audience, ESPECIALLY in the case of the Vita where people seem to be very open to try other genres than just their typical favourite genre. This is also promoted by Sony through PS+ which gives people free games of genres they might not have tried, and therefore again open up the customer to more genres.

RCR's competition was every other game on the Vita store and there are quite a few of them. Having a GTA on Vita would mean a higher install base since that is basically a system seller, so chances are RCR would have sold even more to people looking for a 2D GTA once they are done with RCR.



Could you link me?

Sure.

https://twitter.com/Polytron

Scroll down to Feb 21.

He also retweeted Brian Provinciano's tweets about the topic in this thread.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Also, the RCR dev on the ease of porting over his game:

Brian Provinciano ‏@BriProv
@amxn @lecanardzero The SDK, devkit, documentation and sample code was all the most well put together. Ported RCR to it faster than anything

So much for "But what did it cost to port it over?? Did he even make his money back??"
 
Kenneth Hampton ‏@kennygotgame
@BriProv Please give us an rpg that has depth! i bet it would sell like hotcakes!


Brian Provinciano ‏@BriProv
@kennygotgame Don't worry. @mutekicorp and @werezompire will have you covered.

Mutekicorp is behind the release of Dragon Fantasy, a 16 bit style RPG, and werezompire is Zeboyd games, who are behind some notable PC old school RPG releases.


Some more goodies and a GAF mention

Robert Boyd ‏@werezompire
Looks like our conversation earlier today attracted some interest at Neogaf - http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=516300 … @ShaneWatch @BriProv

Michael A Cunningham ‏@FinalMacstorm
@werezompire @ShaneWatch @BriProv I'm glad that others are showing their support. Like I said, if you build it, they will come.

Brian Provinciano ‏@BriProv
@finalmacstorm @werezompire @ShaneWatch definitely!

Michael A Cunningham ‏@FinalMacstorm
@BriProv @werezompire @ShaneWatch Vita owners are the hardcore, so support them and they will support you.

bryan @ muteki ‏@mutekicorp
@FinalMacstorm @BriProv @werezompire @ShaneWatch Here's hoping!

Michael A Cunningham ‏@FinalMacstorm
@mutekicorp @BriProv @werezompire @ShaneWatch Just need the right backing to get noticed.

Michael Cunningham is Editor in Chief of RPGamer among other things. Sorry if that is hard to follow, but it is twitter.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Mutekicorp is behind the release of Dragon Fantasy, a 16 bit style RPG, and werezompire is Zeboyd games, who are behind some notable PC old school RPG releases.


Some more goodies and a GAF mention



Michael Cunningham is Editor in Chief of RPGamer among other things. Sorry if that is hard to follow, but it is twitter.

Thanks for updating us on that :) I tried looking into it myself, but could barely find out where to look for tweets regarding the issue or who/how/when retweeted whom.
 
Thanks for updating us on that :) I tried looking into it myself, but could barely find out where to look for tweets regarding the issue or who/how/when retweeted whom.

Basically remove everything with an @ in front of it and the conversation looks fairly normal. The @ names make it easy to tell who all is being talked to though. It sound like Zeboyd's next game, which sounds awesome, may make it day and date on the Vita as well. They are in very early stages though and may even go through a Kickstarter still.

More info on their new game here: http://zeboyd.com/2013/01/15/next-next-game-preliminary-ideas-kickstarter-plans/
 

Tunin

Member
This is what I've been saying from the beginning, all those indie titles from Steam would be a perfect match for Vita. The hardware is good enough to receive the experiences, even if they require some additional support.

Talking about indie titles, I'd love to see Cave Story+ and the Banner Saga on Vita!
 
This is what I've been saying from the beginning, all those indie titles from Steam would be a perfect match for Vita. The hardware is good enough to receive the experiences, even if they require some additional support.

Talking about indie titles, I'd love to see Cave Story+ and the Banner Saga on Vita!

There was a small but vocal crowd asking for the Banner Saga to come to the Vita, I would have hoped with them going well over their goal it would be possible still. I actually backed the project with hopes of a PSN release and possibly Vita release.

Would be a perfect fit, but again same day release date should be the aim. Though if they can't do that then go the bit trip route and let is know a vita version is coming.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Basically remove everything with an @ in front of it and the conversation looks fairly normal. The @ names make it easy to tell who all is being talked to though. It sound like Zeboyd's next game, which sounds awesome, may make it day and date on the Vita as well. They are in very early stages though and may even go through a Kickstarter still.

More info on their new game here: http://zeboyd.com/2013/01/15/next-next-game-preliminary-ideas-kickstarter-plans/

Yeah, reading it is sort of fine. Just looking through Twitter and trying to find the conversation threads seemed very cumbersome to me. Added that last Twitter post of yours to the OP btw.
Asked about FTL in their forums, not getting my hopes up though. Apparently they are thinking of ways to put it on tablets though.
 

Skyzard

Banned
It plays well on a large touchscreen. On a smaller one it can become a little fiddly and I think the screen on the Vita would be too small. It's difficult selecting a specific touchable object sometimes on the iPad, so it's hard to imagine how you're supposed to hit them when amongst a large group of similarly touchable objects on the Vita.

Hmm, I haven't played it on an iPhone but I do have a Note II which has a similarly sized screen and I haven't had much trouble - I always pinch in/out to get the best view...some of the UI buttons I need to be more careful with, quite close together.
 

Miutsu

Member
Thats the link from the Tweet above btw :) Sorry for not mentioning.

Yeah, I sent them an email with the question because either I'm blind or I don't see mentions of South America at all :), I know its supposed to be SCE of America but it specificaly says "SCEA Territory (for North America Territory)", so I'm waiting to see what they answer, thanks a lot!
 

Macstorm

Member
Mutekicorp is behind the release of Dragon Fantasy, a 16 bit style RPG, and werezompire is Zeboyd games, who are behind some notable PC old school RPG releases.

Some more goodies and a GAF mention

Michael Cunningham is Editor in Chief of RPGamer among other things. Sorry if that is hard to follow, but it is twitter.

Yup, that's me. I've got in interview in the works with Muteki, too. Should be going up before too long. We talk about indie development and working on the Vita.

For those who don't know, Muteki's first RPG was Dragon Fantasy which first came out on iOS and then was ported to PC/Mac. It's being remade for the PS3/Vita and you can see the changes here. Hopefully it will hit soon and then later Dragon Fantasy Book II will hit. So there are two indie RPGs coming this from the same dev. Glad to see Robert from Zeboyd ready to dive in as well. Just looking at our readership, there is a strong JRPG leaning toward Sony platforms and if they will make it easier to develop for? Awesome.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Sony digging out a niche with indie games is pretty cool, let's just hope it results in more stuff like Frozen Synapse and Binding of Isaac (aside from the fact that these are late "ports") instead of Retro City Garbage.
 
The puzzle platforming in Thomas was a little too slow for my tastes (having to manage ~4 characters at once can feel tedious) but the narration / story was great. It hard to make you care about a colored box but the game manages somehow. I'd put Claire, the big blue box, up against your Lees and Clems in the character of the year contest. You go Claire! Float on that water!
 
I also believe that this is one of the reasons why Indie games are doing as good on Vita as they do, the userbase seems to be very open-minded about the games they try/buy.

I agree with that sentiment, but I think an even bigger reason why Indie games do well on the Vita is because the current install base has a high percentage of gamers with larger than average discretionary spending.

I was listening to NPR last night and heard a story about the Food Processing Industry. The guy was talking about how Coca-Cola secured the market the way they did. They basically used the formula developed by Vilfredo Pareto, who was an Italian Economist, who theorized that 20% of consumers consume 80% of a product. So the first thing Coke did was to categorize and market to "high use" consumers of Coke (i.e. those that drank 3 to 4 cokes a day). They then created the "endless" cup of coke that you see at most restaurants by making a policy of free refills on fountain drinks. The strategy worked remarkably well.

In my opinion, Sony does a very good job at marketing to those "high use" gaming consumers through promotions such as PS+ and making all games on the Vita day one digital. Due to the price of the console and the memory cards a lot of Vita owners have the discretionary money to make impulse buys on PSN, particularly on cheaper Indie titles. Therefore, I think it is safe to hypothesize that, if you look at the gaming industry at a whole, a high percentage of the top 20% of high consumption gamers are Vita owners. Proof comes from the high attachment rates of indie titles like RCR, bigger titles like Assassin's Creed Liberation, which Ubisoft confirmed sold more than 600K, and from Sony which recently commented on the growing trend of PS Vita digital sales outpacing PS3 digital sales.
 

jorgeton

Member
Yup, that's me. I've got in interview in the works with Muteki, too. Should be going up before too long. We talk about indie development and working on the Vita.

For those who don't know, Muteki's first RPG was Dragon Fantasy which first came out on iOS and then was ported to PC/Mac. It's being remade for the PS3/Vita and you can see the changes here. Hopefully it will hit soon and then later Dragon Fantasy Book II will hit. So there are two indie RPGs coming this from the same dev. Glad to see Robert from Zeboyd ready to dive in as well. Just looking at our readership, there is a strong JRPG leaning toward Sony platforms and if they will make it easier to develop for? Awesome.

That Dragon Fantasy game looks sweet! I love that our indie dev brothers and sisters are taking up the mantle of making classic JRPGs. And that I can soon have it on my vita alongside stuff like P4G or Soul Sacrifice really is the icing on the cake.
 

Jhriad

Member
Popular Indie games that have been announced for Vita:
Hotline Miami
Bit.Trip Runner 2
Binding of Issac
Frozen Synapse
Dragon Fantasy
Lone Survivor
Velocity HD
Machinarium
Rainbow Moon
Starlight Inception
A Virus named Tom
Vektropolis
Divekick
Guacamelee!
Luftrausers
Snapshot
Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee New N' Tasty!
Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee HD

Kick Beat
Thomas was alone

Holy Shit. I need a Vita.

tumblr_lfr3v2PCqA1qare4mo1_500.gif
 
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