Marble Madness creator Mark Cerny has always been a giant within the industry – but he's often tended to operate behind the scenes, working as a consultant on major PlayStation franchises such as Killzone and Uncharted. That changed during the platform holder’s PlayStation Meeting presentation earlier in the year, when he was introduced as the PlayStation 4’s lead architect, and has adopted gaming celebrity status ever since. However, the next generation console isn’t the first system that the former SEGA employee’s designed.
Despite the platform holder curiously keeping the tidbit under wraps, Eurogamer.net has discovered that the development legend also constructed the PlayStation Vita. “I had the same [lead architect] role on the [handheld],” he told the website at the Tokyo Game Show this week. Of course, as the publication more meticulously points out, the hallmarks of Cerny’s philosophy are all over the device. It is, for starters, built around simple development principles – and is even made up of off-the-shelf components just like the PS4.
With both systems being designed simultaneously, Cerny and Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida worked to find a way to link the two devices – and the high-rolling executives happened upon the idea of Remote Play. “Yoshida and I ended up both pitching that feature on the same day,” he said. “It was an amazing coincidence. We had both come to the same conclusions that the affinity for the two platforms to work together was so large that it just made sense.” The rest, as they say, is history...
[source eurogamer.net]
Comments 11
Sony needs to change the name of the company in Cerny!
So he's to blame for the proprietary storage? And the expensive tech that will seem outdated in a years time? He did a bad job with vita. Good thing the ps4 is looking fantastic
@Sanquine Beat me to it!
@Sanquine CernStation 4? It has a nice ring to it.
@eLarkos Had they used newer tech, the Vita would have been even more expensive and it would still seem outdated in a years time.
So he did an excellent job with the Vita.
@Lelouch If satisfying a small minority of hardcore gamers was Sony's goal then he did a great job. If selling units was Sony's goal then he's done a terrible job.
To begin with the Vita should have released with an LCD screen, SD support, no back touch surface and 4 shoulder buttons to keep prices minimal (essentially replicating a DS3 but with a screen). This seems to be their strategy now anyway - with ps4 remote play and Vita TV. With these two MAJOR features, the front and rear touch have been rendered useless.
Dont get me wrong, i love the idea of the front and rear touch as i think it potentially adds cool gameplay features but it just doesnt fit well with their overall strategy.
What baffles me is that they claim all of these products were being developed simultaneously.
Lets face it, Sony is adapting their vita strategy to try to salvage it in anyway... and i don't blame them.
Good job with Vita Cerny, love my, now Sony just have to make the majority of people know Vita and it's games...
Yeah, Cerny did a god job with Vita. best handheld ever created in terms of hardware. Analogs are just perfect.While 3DS is more like PSP. Vita is a whole new level of portable experience.
But it has some software flows. Account limitations. You can't read messeges while playing on-line, because if you push HOME button in multiplayer, you lose connection. So, your only option is voice party chat. Which works without any problems, though. They need to add option, to read messeges or start party chat without disconnecting from MPsession.
@eLarkos You make many good points, but it's probably not fair to blame Cerny for the Vita's sales. While you could argue it was down to him to make a compelling piece of hardware (I'd argue that he succeeded), a lot of the issues with Vita — software support, pricing, marketing — are largely out of his hands.
@get2sammyb true, true. I would think his design heavily influenced price and this led to an initial poor uptake by consumers and therefore low 3rd party support now (chicken and egg. I know ). But you are right, this may never have been a problem if 1st party devs had great games out of the gate and proper marketing support was given early on. Still, with remote play and vita TV now a strong focus it seems that the touch features in games are going to reduce.. begging the question, were they needed in the first place?
@eLarkos LOL, Is it so hard to make 2 different ways of input?
@Gemuarto Yes, hence why multiple Vita games are not playable on Vita TV
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