Triple-A economics ‘simply don’t work’ on Vita, SCEA’s Mesa says

Sony has admitted that traditional triple-A game development on PlayStation Vita is not a viable business model.

Instead, it now believes that streaming console games from PS4 and, via PlayStation Now, PS3 offers the best route for triple-A gaming on the machine.

The economics simply don’t work with the traditional process,” SCEA’s product planning and platform software innovation director Don Mesa said in response to a fan asking for more good triple-A games” on Vita along the lines of Killzone: Mercenary and Uncharted: Golden Abyss.

We have to do something different to get triple-A games on Vita. We accomplished it to a certain degree by making PS4 games work on Vita via remote play. 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.”

Vita’s early days were categorised by criticisms that an expensive machine with console-like game prices would simply not be able to compete with modern smartphones offering free or 69p titles.