Our Vita sales are better than PS3, says Stealth Inc dev

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Our Vita sales are better than PS3, says Stealth Inc dev

Lack of triple-A gives indies room to breathe

 

By Rob Crossley on Thursday 1st May 2014 at 11:51 AM BST

 

Sony's PlayStation Vita may have less than a tenth of the PS3's total installed base, but for indie developer and publisher Curve, the handheld generates better business on many games.

 

The London studio recently announced Stealth Inc 2 will be a Wii U exclusive, a move which bucks industry trends as key publishers lessen their investment in Nintendo's system.

 

 

Sony has not announced PS Vita sales since January 2013

 

Curve managing director Jason Perkins sees this as an opportunity, however.

 

"There isn't much competition on Nintendo's store, so we thought that commercially it's a really good opportunity for us," he told CVG in a newly published interview.

 

As testament to the concept that console install bases are not king, Curve's design director Jonathan Biddle revealed that the studio's games sales are stronger on Vita than on PS3.

 

"I think Vita has been a surprise success for us," he said.

 

"If you compare it to the PS3, for example, you'd expect the home console would be selling the most. Vita's doing way better for us though. That's not proportionally, that's in terms of unit sales."

 

As well as developing the first Stealth Inc for numerous systems (including PS3, Vita and PS4), the group also publishes numerous indie games across Sony platforms. The likes of Thomas Was Alone and Proteus have shipped on Vita and PS3 due to Curve's cross-platform technology.

 

As of November, Sony had sold about 80 million PS3s and an unknown number of Vitas (believed, but not proven, to be around the eight million mark). Biddle believes the Vita game sales are better for several reasons.

"There's a more dedicated set of people who appreciate the kinds of games that are coming to Vita," he said.

 

"And you don't have the kind of competition that you have with PS3, because there aren't triple-A games on Vita. You don't get the big games on Vita any more, but you are getting a lot of the same sized digital games. These are gamers' games. They're small and can kind of be experimental in some way, but they're all interesting and there's loads of them."

 

Rob Clarke, marketing executive at Curve, added that last-gen platforms are increasingly harder to sell downloadable games on for inevitable reasons.

 

"PS3 digital games are a trickier proposition," he said.

 

"You know you're going to get rid of that console eventually, and for physical games that's not much of a problem, because gamers will trade in those games for next gen titles, but with digital they can't. It's inevitable that people will see the PS3 as a limited platform now and will not be so keen on buying digital titles for it."

 

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/461591/our-vita-sales-are-better-than-ps3-says-stealth-inc-dev/