Is Vita losing developer support already? Sony responds

An anonymous quote from Japan's Nikkei newspaper paints a bleak picture for the future of the PlayStation Vita, but Scott Rohde, Sony's senior vice president of Worldwide Studios, rebuts. The PlayStation Vita has failed to catch fire in the Japanese marketplace since its December launch -- being routinely beaten in weekly sales by its predecessor, the PSP, which is still popular there, as well as Nintendo's 3DS. In a story that went up on Nikkei's website today, written by Kiyoshi Shin, former head of Japan's IGDA branch, an unnamed source from the Japanese game industry says that "Major Japanese companies are canceling all projects intended for the Vita and are changing development to the 3DS." "I did not see that quote, but you see extremist quotes like that all the time," says Rohde, who spoke to Gamasutra about the incipient launch of the Vita in North America. "I mean, obviously, there is no way anyone could stand in front of a camera and say that all developers are changing focus from one platform to another, no matter what it is." Rohde went on to say that his guess is that it's "largely exaggerated. I know many, many, many third party developers and publishers are feverishly working on Vita titles, not just for now, but for the foreseeable future." It might not be literally true, but does it hint at a real trend? "No, I absolutely haven't heard," says Rohde. "There's always going to be the hot platform of the moment in our industry," he says. "There's always going to be reason to talk about a story like that." "You can, whatever -- rewind two years ago. Every developer was you knew was selling -- going towards -- I was going to say 'selling their soul', it almost came out -- to go build games for Zynga and the Facebook platform. And there's another time when you see everyone is going to do smaller iPad games, or iOS games in general. Then it was PS3, it was 360, it's Vita, it's 3ds. It's always, constantly changing. It's not something that concerns me whatsoever." The full interview with Rohde, which contains his thoughts on the Vita's launch and future, and major competitors Apple and Nintendo, will be live on Gamasutra next week.