Sony Committed to Vita, But Not Planning More Big, Uncharted-Style Releases

Despite not being featured during Sony's E3 press conference in June, the PlayStation Vita is currently enjoying improved sales, and Sony has no intention of letting its handheld fall by the wayside.

That's according to Sony UK boss Fergal Gara, who told Eurogamer, "It's trucking along. It's currently in year-on-year growth and enjoying a healthy year, and it's about to hit its biggest and potentially most powerful release of the year, which is Minecraft. That could be an extraordinary release for Vita."

Minecraft launched recently on PlayStation 4, and on PS3 last year, where it's remained the console's top-selling digital game in the US every month since its release. Although it's several years old at this point, the game's power shouldn't be underestimated--its PS4 release looks to have been the cause of PlayStation Network issues on the day it hit the PlayStation Store.

"[W]hat we are excited by is the number of games we can take to the platform that have been created for other platforms" -- Fergal Gara

Even without Minecraft, the PS4 has given somewhat of a boost to the Vita's "robust and consistent" sales, according to Gara. "We're seeing a bit of reflected glory from PS4," he said. "So there is a traction in Remote Play, and we see the numbers there." There have been rumors of a PS4 and Vita bundle happening; Sony, for its part, has said it thinks the prospect is interesting and hasn't ruled out the possibility.

Gara says the Vita's recent sales bump isn't due entirely to the PS4. "It's just found its niche," he said. "It's not the biggest niche in the world, and we've been fairly open about talking about it entered a crowded landscape with many other devices providing some sort of handheld fulfillment. But for those who want that more specialist device and a more specialist experience, it does a damn good job, and therefore it trucks along quite nicely."

The Vita's focus has shifted greatly since its launch on 2012, when Sony positioned it as a handheld that offered console-style games like Uncharted: Golden Abyss. More recently, it's become the place for Remote Play and indie games. Gara suggested we're not likely to see Uncharted or Killzone on Vita again, "[b]ut what we are excited by is the number of games we can take to the platform that have been created for other platforms." He cited Minecraft and Lego Batman 3 as examples of such games.

That we might not see a lot of big, triple-A games on Vita shouldn't come as a surprise, given that Sony has already said the economics of those types of games don't work on Vita.

Earlier this year, Sony launched the first hardware revision of the Vita, introducing a lighter system with better battery life that lacks the OLED-powered screen from the original version. You can read our review of that system here.