Kevin BosticHoping to counter a trend that's seen its portable devices struggling against competitors like Apple's iPhone, Sony on Wednesday announced that it would be removing barriers to publishing for independent developers by doing away with their licensing fees.
As of May 7, the Publisher License Fee for PlayStation Mobile has been waived, according to a post (via Kotaku) on the PlayStation Blog. Developers of all stripes no longer have to pay the $99 fee in order to get their games onto Sony's PlayStation Vita or any other PlayStation-certified device.
PS Vita owners will see developers' games available in the PlayStation Mobile section of the PlayStation Store, as will owners of PlayStation-certified devices (Sony's tablets and Xperia handsets, as well as a number of devices from Sharp, HTC, and Fujitsu). The move is likely aimed at halting or at least slowing the momentum that has seen developers increasingly interested in mobile platforms at the expense of traditional home and portable gaming consoles.
Sony's gaming rival, Nintendo, is also looking to court mobile game developers. On Monday, the gaming giant began offering kits to make it easier to port smartphone games to the Wii U in light of that console's low initial sales.
Previously, Sony dropped prices on its PS Vita in Japan. The portable console has seen disappointing sales as devices like the iPhone have proved a more attractive platform to consumers.
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14 Comments
If $99 is going to make or break your game development business, then I suspect that your game development business is NOT going to make or break Sony's platform. :p
[quote name="nagromme" url="/t/157434/sony-hopes-to-counter-smartphone-games-with-free-playstation-vita-developer-tools#post_2324035"]If $99 is going to make or break your game development business, then I suspect that your game development business is NOT going to make or break Sony's platform. :p[/quote] Why not? It's done wonders for iOS. I know that Sony purposely makes it difficult to code for the PS3 but it looks like they went away from that tactic on the PS4. I wonder how it is for the Vita.
I remember so many times certain jerks on this forum chewing out Apple for charging $99 to become a bonafide Apple developer, yet no one raised one iota of anger at how Sony was screwing developers of its platform. Literally, thousands of dollars per year to be a developer, had to have an actual, physical office space (not allowed to use develop from home) and other nonsense terms.
I have zero sympathy for Sony. Good riddance.
Free tools? Apple has free iOS dev tools (Xcode). They charge to actually use the App Store to upload the app, however. I think Sony is losing the war here.
They didn't purposefully do anything of the sort. The PS3 is difficult to code for thanks to the idiosyncrasies of the Cell processor which powers that console. Sony thought the could release tools that would make the process easier, and developers would initially code for the PS3 and then port to the 360. In reality, developers did the exact opposite.