Epic Games inked an agreement with Sony to deploy Unreal Engine 3 on PS Vita, way back when it was previously known as NGP. Despite this, the house of Gears of War is shunning the handheld as far as in-house development goes. Company president Mike Capps told GI.biz  in a recent interview that the reluctance towards investing in a Vita project is down to the fact that its market penetration remains unknown.

Chief among Capps’ concerns is the growing smartphone market, which he feels could pose a significant hurdle to success.

“It’s a really cool platform, but I have a phone, and it’s really hard to compete with that,” explained Capps.

He added, “We got our tech on it really early. 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.”

“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.”

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