SEGA PSVITA Support "a lot more announcements on that over the coming months"

[Shin-Ra]

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SEGA's Mike Hayes

Q: What are you impressions of E3 this year, of the three platform holders?

Mike Hayes: Well there's a lot of good news from first party. We've talked about this so much over the last few days, anything that's new is good, isn't it? It's something for us to talk about, something different. We've given a lot of support to Vita. I think we're the only playable third party code on the stand actually, Virtua Tennis 4. And we gave a commitment to Sony quite a while ago that we would support Vita, and you'll see a lot more announcements on that over the coming months.

Q: That's good to hear. You said about PS Vita, presumably you're going to be there with releases on day one?

Mike Hayes: We would like to think so, but that's subject to when does the hardware come out, you know, Sony approval, there's a lot of things. That is our ambition and that is our wish to be out day and date with the hardware machine whenever it happens.

Q: It's still important for Sega to do that? To be first when those new platforms come out?

Mike Hayes: I think so. I mean, we do it because we think it's commercially appropriate but we do believe in the Vita system, and therefore that's why we've given it our support and we think being out first when there's relatively fewer titles is quite important. One of the first titles, Tennis World Tour on PSP, was one of the biggest selling titles. It just suited the platform ideally and as you can imagine with the kind of flick motions that you've now got it suits a tennis game and it's a good demonstrator of what the machine can do.

And our tech guys are really quite excited with other things, and there is a game that we've got in the pipeline, this new IP that we can't talk about yet that will be, I think, of all the things I've seen, this game will show off the technical attributes of Vita in quite an exciting way. So yeah, being out first is quite important for us, but it has to be commercially relevant to do that.

New Jet Set Radio please!

[Septimus Prime]

Valkyria Chronicles, please!

[Shin-Ra]

That's far more likely.

Another Yakuza spin-off like Black Panther too.

[Nerdkiller likes BD]

*fingers crossed* Sega Rally, Sega Rally, Sega Rally...

[Shin-Ra]

PlayStation Vita is 'Technically Brilliant,' says Sega

PlayStation Vita unfortunately won't be launching in the U.S. or Europe this year, but when Sony does finally ship the new portable Sega will be right there with them. It's clear that Sega has big plans in mind for the Vita; the company will be there on day one with Virtua Tennis and there are "several" more titles planned.

Sega West CEO Mike Hayes seemed particularly excited when talking with IndustryGamers about Vita. "We had Virtua Tennis World Tour on PSP when it first came out. It was one of the biggest 3rd party sellers - obviously bigger in Europe than it will be in the States, but we’ve managed to use a lot of the functionality of Vita. And we’ve made it very clear we’re going to support Sony with that title. ... It’s interesting on Vita - technically it’s brilliant, it’s beautiful, and it’s really great to play. And Sony has made it very clear they want to target core gamers primarily. So we take that on board with the titles that we’re going to bring out," he said.

Besides being a powerful handheld focused on the core, Vita also offers developers an opportunity to provide a wide variety of titles at different price points, with some being direct downloads. Sony seems to be ahead of the game compared to 3DS's eShop in this regard. Hayes believes that this will turn out to be Vita's greatest strength.

"The nice thing about the Vita, I think, is ultimately going to be the range of software pricing types that you can put on it so it’s not just the high end game at the high end price," he told us. "You can do the mid-point, more like your XBLA or PSN titles and of course maybe even a small bite size of more app type software. For me, the strength of that device is the whole spectrum of software, that will either sell as physical or as digital. That, I think, is a big point of difference for us as a developer. So that’s pretty cool."

p.s. Give me a Shenmue I+II collection on PSVITA. And Shenmue III.

SEGA could add in geolocation features and have you pretend you're running around Japan or China. Run to this location to receive your free knockoff Zippo lighter!

[AranhaHunter]

Skies of Arcadia 2 without random battles and I'm happy. Hell I would be happy with a Skies of Arcadia remake.

[Shin-Ra]

I'd love it if SEGA revived Feel The Magic / The Rub Rabbits. It's the perfect series for taking advantage of multitouch and the rear touchpad.

It's the sort of game that made DS fresh early on.