Why 2012 won't be the year of the Vita

As much as I'd like it to, but not as much as Sony need it to, I've noticed the big problem with the Vita. You might have too - all those mildly interesting new games revealed at the Spike awards - not one of them was for the Vita.

If U.S. developers thought the Vita was going to be worth their time, at least one or two of those games would have had a "for Vita" tag on them, and if the machine is on a par with the PS3 in any way, it's not because the Vita is difficult to code for or convert games to, far from it. The not-Metal Gear game in particular seemed ripe for Vita-ness.

Therefore, a logical conclusion is that developers of the big-name "event" games aren't biting. Sure there's an impressive launch line-up, but the original PSP had that and only in the subsequent years did it tail off as developers focused on the PS3. But with no sign of any of the new-era big name games, like Batman, Catherine and so on, Vita is already being ignored.

Now everyone is fixated on the Xbox which is doing massive sales and looking at the PS3 as a secondary target, which leaves the Vita off the radar. Of course, this could just be an industrywide ploy to keep the focus on all the launch games garnering press and there will be a second wave of announcements after the console is generally available, but I was expecting more news than there has been about its second batch of titles.