The last few years have seen thousands of indie games appearing on iOS devices and mobile phones, some of which have gone on to make millions for their developers. Xbox 360 has an indie games section on Xbox LIVE marketplace but Sony’s current consoles – PlayStation 3 and PSP - have never really hosted games by ‘garage developers’ in a meaningful way.

That’s all set to change, according to comments made by president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios (SCE WWS) Shuhei Yoshida during a recent interview with Develop.

“As an industry, we have to support those smaller teams [indie developers], and let them try out their ideas,” he said. “Without doing so, the whole industry will stall, in terms of innovation.”

Yoshida also pointed out that the upcoming PS Vita is the perfect platform for indie developers to unleash their creativity on a broad market outside the mobile phone and iOS arena, without having to incur too much expense along the way. He also stressed that touch-screen games can be easily adapted for the device.

“It is small and light and easy for developers to handle,” he said. “We made it so the development kit wouldn’t be too expensive.”

“Because Vita has capability to do wholly touched-based or [Augmented Reality]-based games, lots of things can be done using just a small portion of the technology.”

“Having the capability to sell their games on the network is key to giving those smaller teams an opportunity to come up with ideas,” Yoshida continued, “and sometimes invest their own money to come up with something special and have their projects meet with millions of users.”

It remains to be seen if Sony will ever encourage app-like programs to run on its consoles, since these aren’t games in the traditional sense. One of the reasons the iPad and iPhone have been so successful is due to the sheer variety and amount of content users can download and run on those devices.

The PS Vita has all the hardware in place to give iOS platforms a run for their money, but Sony may have a hard time winning over this lucrative market if the Vita shies away from app support. Nevertheless, Yoshida’s remarks signal a fresh approach for Sony to the indie scene, and hopefully the Vita sells well enough to give these budding developers a chance to prove their worth to the PlayStation community.

Source: Develop