Porting to PSVita

[Chimaera9]

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with bringing a VN game made on TyranoBuilder over to Sony's PSVita? From what I've been reading, it doesn't sound easy, not to mention the extra cost of $2500 for a Vita Dev Kit and another $1000 for a Vita Tester Kit.

Will I need to hire a programmer to port it over? I'm not very capable with coding...
Any other tips? I'm nowhere near ready to do this yet, but I'm trying to plan ahead...

[ZephyrFloofyDerg]

Maybe just wait for the Vita to reach end of life and look into the homebrew scene. Strictly speaking though I don't think Sony would let you charge money for it though.

[Chimaera9]

Huh? Sony lets lots of VN developers charge money for their products, they're very supportive of indie developers, and I'm not just talking about big studios. There's actually a process they have for you to register your company with them and get a development kit.

As for Vita being at the end of its life, people say that because physical products (the flash card games) are no longer supported. The digital scene is still strong, and the strongest games for Vita have always been RPG's and VN's.

By the way, for anyone interested, I just found a cool publisher who ports ios games over to Vita and PS4, called Ratalaika. Check them out if you like--I'm already in talks with them now.

[Shimmersoft]

Originally posted by Chimaera9:

Huh? Sony lets lots of VN developers charge money for their products, they're very supportive of indie developers, and I'm not just talking about big studios. There's actually a process they have for you to register your company with them and get a development kit.

As for Vita being at the end of its life, people say that because physical products (the flash card games) are no longer supported. The digital scene is still strong, and the strongest games for Vita have always been RPG's and VN's.

By the way, for anyone interested, I just found a cool publisher who ports ios games over to Vita and PS4, called Ratalaika. Check them out if you like--I'm already in talks with them now.

I'd be curious to know if they can port something like a TyranoBuilder game to Vita/PS4. Maybe come back and let us know if you learn anything more about that process!

[ZephyrFloofyDerg]

Okay, just be aware that developing games for a dead platform isn't always the best idea... but good luck to you anyway!

[Chimaera9]

I just talked with the publisher Ratalaika, and they port games to the Vita. They have a strong record of it, with a good number of games released recently and a few more on the way in the next few months. They said porting to the Vita is something they have been doing for years, but will continue porting only for 1 more year, because Unity recently dropped support for Vita this year. So, hopefully I can finish the game before the end of 2019! I think it would be great for Vita gamers to have some new games to play before development for the system stops (essentially...not everybody uses Unity, but many do). Vita games will still be available for purchase long after the development of new games ceases.

I will definitely release on Steam first, but if I can get it ported over to Vita, there is a very strong VN and RPG following for the handheld console.