Epic's Mike Capps: PS Vita is a 'really cool platform', but it's 'really hard' to compete with phones

In a recent interview with website GamesIndustry.biz, Epic Games president Mike Capps made comments regarding his company's reluctance to support the upcoming PS Vita.

Asked if his company ever looks at a new gaming device and says 'no' to making a title for it, Capps responded: "We're not currently making a Vita game, I'm not sure how well it's going to be accepted in our Western market which is primarily where our games sell."

"It's a really cool platform, but I have a phone, and it's really hard to compete with that."

By "that", Capps means the increasing popularity of smartphone gaming and the widespread availability of bite-sized 69p / 99c titles on Apple's App Store, for example.

Supporting from the back

Still, despite the lack of planned PS Vita games from Epic, the company's Unreal Engine 3 is compatible with Sony's new platform.

"We were, I think, one of the very first people to get one and work with it and we were on stage at the launch, because we have a lot of licensees who are curious about it and so we did the first part," Capps stated.

"But we can't really fully support that platform unless we're shipping our own games, that's how we know we know that platform, and it's really important for us to do that.

"And so with Vita we're not planning on shipping a game and so that means we're pretty honest with folks and say 'you can have the Vita code we've got but this is not the same as us having shipped on Xbox or iPhone'."