Sony believes releasing an iOS game is like 'playing the lottery'

Sony has used to gamescom to proudly show off how many indies are choosing to release their game on PS Vita. Sony believes the reason for this, amongst other things, is that developers stand to make more money on Vita than on other mobile devices.

"More developers make more money on average on Vita than they do on mobile," Shahid Ahmad, senior business development manager at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, said. It isn't just Sony saying that, either. Many independent developers, including Mike Bithell and Brian Provinciano have attested to the fact.

We spend a lot time doom saying the dedicated handheld market, but Ahmad believes that even though there is a lower user base with Vita than mobile, those users are there specifically to buy games. On other mobile platforms you're competing against apps of every variety, and a large portion of the user base isn't necessarily interested in games. "If you want to play the lottery, then putting a game on iOS is more like that," said Ahmad.

Ahmad believes there's a great deal of luck involved with releasing on iOS. Some games get discovered, like Vlambeer's Ridiculous Fishing which bucked the free-to-play trend and has gone on to sell 300,000 copies. Others simply don't get noticed and sink.

"Whereas Vita, every week when there's content coming out, people buzz about it and it spreads like wildfire, because everyone's firing that console up every day to look at the content and talk about it."

Of course, Vita would be an even more attractive prospect if more people owned one. Sony is trying to see to that by slashing the price in the US and Europe, following a price cut in Japan in February. It'll also support remote play with most PS4 games. Sony and indie devs alike will be hoping this encourages more customers to pick up the console.

Thanks, Shack News.