Sony's Jim Ryan clarifies the PS Vita focus at Gamescom

Despite his placid "here is the weather forecast" presentation, Sony's Jim Ryan stood up and helped the Vita back to its feet at Gamescom. Afterwards, he spent some time with CVG clarifying some of the points raised during the show and over the event.

At the press conference was it your objective to pitch the PS Vita as a PS3 companion?

JR: No I think the priority was to convey the range of great IP that's coming to the platform this Christmas, and I think we achieved that. It's not so much about considering the PS Vita as the 'little brother' of PS3, I mean we consider it a partnership of equals. Obviously, if you have in excess of twenty million people in Europe that have a PS3, that's a pretty good place to start.

 I did get the impression that you're now pitching PS Vita to PS3 owners specifically. That narrows your target market of course but gives you focus. Would that be fair to say?

JR:  I think we're trying to appeal to PS3 owners, but I don't see how that is essentially restrictive. The main emphasis for PS Vita at our Gamescom press conference was the focus on this big killer IP that will be on the platform.

 But how can PS Vita appeal to the more casual audience? What does it have?

JR:  Well, the games we create for the PlayStation Mobile initiative are compatible with Vita and we see Vita as being one of the primary devices for that content. We have a lot of Vita network games that are lighter touch but are priced accordingly. So I think there's a reasonable amount of things now that will appeal to that side of the market.

Read the full interview which includes discussion on developer struggles, crossplay, 3D and more on CVG's page.