Sony admits getting third-party support for Vita is 'difficult'

Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation is one of the few high profile third-party exclusives gracing the Vita in the coming months. But where are all the other heavy-hitters?

Sony Worldwide Studio president Shuhei Yoshida admits that, in spite of the quality of the Vita hardware, the platform holder is "having a more difficult time than anticipated in terms of getting support from third-party publishers."

Yoshida blames the increasing competition of handheld devices, specifically mobile phones. "Because of the growth of the social/mobile sector, lots of opportunities are being presented to publishers to choose from," he told PlayStation: The Official Magazine (via IGN). "And because the social/mobile side is the growing sector in terms of the business now, they are very quickly shifting their development resources to be part of that growing market."

So how can Sony stem the loss of interested third party developers? Yoshida doesn't offer an answer, but perhaps PlayStation Mobile (formerly known as PlayStation Suite) can offer some hope. With the Mobile SDK, developers can make games across not only PlayStation devices, but Android phones as well.