Back to the start with leaked Uncharted Vita developer pitch

As the Vita heads to museums and becomes a bit of a gaming curio, the race is on to archive and recover as much of the early information as possible. While the Ark of the Covenant will be the specs for any Vita second-generation model, for now check out this 380MB pitch document distributed to Sony by Bend Studios as development of Vita games got underway. 

The Vita might be 10 years old, but developers were working on games for it years in advance. Still one of the best looking games on the Vita, Uncharted NGP (or Golden Abyss as we know and love it) was massively ambitious for a portable game, as Sony realised the console-gaming-on-the-go dream. 

The files include a video presentation from 2009 showing just how full-on development was years before the Vita launched. And how it used the Vita's touch and tilt controls to increase interaction, with melee combat and the social networking integration with social media, all of which made it into the game to some degree. There's also some early art and videos of the Vita's features in action against an early prototype device. 

The multiplayer was supposed to have more social elements in the form of a treasure hunt, before eventually settling on the card-game update, Fight for Fortune. 

The total budget was $13.5 million and was expected to break even at 650K copies sold at around $32 (price to stores?) a game, but the retail price points ended up higher. Overall, Uncharted Golden Abyss is estimated to have sold 1.6 million (physical copies) according to VGC, so was hopefully a decent success. 

I wonder what else will turn up from the vaults!