Apps World 12: Indies can thrive on PlayStation Mobile, despite C# requirement, says Sony

With PlayStation Mobile about to go live in nine countries tomorrow (3 October), Apps World 2012 was the perfect opportunity for Sony to talk about its new platform.

That responsibility fell to Shahid Ahmad, senior business development for PlayStation Mobile at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

"PlayStation Mobile brings the trusted PlayStation brand to mobile, and we're launching with over 20 titles, mainly from independent developers," he said.

"It's a new platform that will bring PlayStation games to mobile, and mobile games to PlayStation."

Launch titles include new games Rebel from PomPom Games, FuturLab's Fuel Tiracas and a new version of Vlambeer's hardcore Super Crate Box

The service will go live in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan and Australia.

The advantages for developers, Ahmad argued, is that PlayStation Network - which provides the foundation to the service - has over 100 million registered users and has generated over $2 billion in revenue.

The launch games will run on PS Vita, Sony tablets, most Sony Xperia phones, and the HTC One S and X devices.

Details of support from other hardware partners including Asus, Fujitsu, Sharp, Wikipad will be formally announced soon.

As for the advantages of PlayStation Mobile, Ahmad said Sony was committed to indies.

"All you need to get going is a Windows PC," he explained.

Developers will have pay a $99 licence fee (similar to Apple), although development occurs using the Mono-based IDE (in C#).

This could be an issue for Sony, as Microsoft's decision to require C# for Windows Phone 7 games restricted its takeup among developers, who generally prefer to code in C++.

"We've gone for C# for security reasons," Admad explained.

"It's easy to port titles over and Mono is very easy-to-use."

He said he couldn't comment on the impact of C# on the Windows Phone 7 gaming business, although pointed out that Xbox Live Arcade (which also required use of Microsoft's C# XNA tools) was popular with indie developers.