TGS 2012: LittleBigPlanet 2, PS Vita and the Future of Cross Buy

President of Sony Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida showed off a demo of LittleBigPlanet PS Vita at the Tokyo Game Show this afternoon, and further explained the intricacies of Sony’s crossplay feature.

In LittleBigPlanet PS Vita, gamers would be able to use their Vita to come to the aid of the PS3 console player – either by taking control of the player’s Sackboy or by guiding him through difficult areas with solutions privy to Vita players only.

Mr Yoshida also introduced the different terms concerned with Sony’s crossplay strategy. Up till today, the general ‘crossplay’ has been used to describe the various aspects of cross platform play with Sony IPs.

‘Cross Goods’ mean the same DLC will be available on both the PS Vita and PS3, while ‘Cross Buy’ means paying just once for DLCs that will be available on both Vita and PS3 platforms. Mr Yoshida gave an example of the necessity of having the cross buy feature: “creation of a level in Sound Shapes is much easier with the touch screen,” he said.

‘Remote Buy’, on the other hand, will refer to playing PS3 games on the PS Vita screen. Some compatible games include God of War, and The Shadow of the Colossus HD remake. 

‘Cross Controller’ was also mentioned; this describes using the PS Vita as a controller for the PS3. While this could be said to be just Sony’s interpretation of Nintendo’s Wii U Gamepad or Microsoft’s SmartGlass, Mr Yoshida described this as “the most advanced feature of all”.

He also announced that a free “Cross Play” patch for Little Big Planet 2 would be released soon.