Sony Makes PS Vita Dev Kits Cheap To Encourage "Garage Developers"

A rumor was circulating after the Pokémon Company announced plans for games for the mobile phone segment that Nintendo might finally be bringing its games to the mobile sector. Nintendo quickly denied that rumor and noted the Pokémon Company is an independent. Sony is actively reaching out to what SCE head Shuhei Yoshida calls the "garage developer" including allowing easy porting of games to Android. He says that to shy away from this sort of developer would be the industry's loss.

One way Sony is going to reach out to and offer support to the small developers is with cheap PS Vita development kits. These kits are also very easy to use so the independent and smaller dev teams can more easily and quickly come up with games for the portable. Also interesting to note is that Sony has said the PS Vita will support games that only use chunk of the tech inside the portable console.

For instance, the console will support games that only use touch controls. That will allow developers to develop games that play more like a mobile game than a traditional portable console offering. Sony is also allowing the porting of PlayStation games to Android using the PlayStation suite. So far, there is no indication of being able to port Android games to the PS Vita, which would seem like a very good idea for Sony.

[via PS Vita]