PlayStation Vita support added to Unity. RIP PlayStation Mobile

 

It was announced in March of last year that Unity would support all of Sony’s platforms, including the PlayStation Vita.  Today that is finally a reality.  The followingimage was announced on the Unity blog:

 

Back in March 2013, we announced a partnership with Sony based on support for every single one of SCE’s PlayStation platforms, in addition to Unity for PlayStation®3. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that with Unity 4.3 we’re releasing Unity for PlayStation®Vita to the public.

Developers with a licensed developer agreement from SCE for PS Vita will now be able to deploy their game to PS Vita via the Unity engine and make use of platform-specific functionality including:

  • Motion sensors
  • Front and rear cameras
  • Dual analog sticks
  • Rear Touch pad

Furthermore, Unity for PS Vita will enable you to integrate the full suite of PSN features into your game, including Trophies, Friends and Matching functionality into your game.

As with all the other platforms we support, Unity for PS Vita allows you to develop your game once, without rewriting the code from scratch; simply build and run it on your PS Vita devkit. Not only that, you can now create both 2D and 3D games with Unity 4.3, animate almost anything with the native animation system Mecanim, and implement very cool graphics. And all of it can be run directly on your PS Vita devkit for quick iteration! Why don’t you head over to the release notesand take a look?

Zoink! has just released their new game “Stick It To The Man” developed in Unity for both PS3 and PS Vita. The game has already been very well received. Check out their game at their websitehttp://www.stickitgame.com/ to see what it is all about!

We are proud to have reached this platform milestone and we are very eager to see what exciting games you will create for PS Vita!

To become a licensed developer for PS Vita please visit the SCE company registration site (https://www.companyregistration.playstation.com).

 

So… what does this mean for PlayStation Mobile’s future?  Let’s just say writing a book on the subject would be a seriously stupid idea!  Truth of the matter is, no matter how much I like the PlayStation Mobile strategy, it was ruined by a number of bad decisions.  First off, they greatly limited the power to support an 8 year old smartphone that nobody bought…  Second, well, they basically abandoned development of it anyways… look at the release history, it is pretty much non existent. Third, it never came to all that many devices in the end, nor did it get supported on PS3 or PS4.  Fourth, it wasn’t all that well promoted, the finished games that is. Fifth, they started charging for it, which completely killed off the nascent community that was being developed.  And they rolled it out in such a way that developers in many countries were SOL.  This was the beginning of the end actually, its when the development community said “oh screw this”.  By the point they undid the developer licensing, people had moved on.

 

Oh, and see above how Unity supports front and rear camera and the rear touch pad as well as trophies, friends and game matching?  PSM supported none of that, even with developer outcry.

RIP PlayStation Mobile, you could have been great. Sad smile

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