I read this thread, and it got me thinking whether or not this ”fact” actually was true; does Vita have more 3^rd party support than the 3DS? And how come it does? Do 3^rd party games preform better on the PSV than on the 3DS? I compiled a Top 10 selling 3^rd Party Games on both consoles to find out.

3DS (with 11 games, read on to find out why):

VITA:

3DS total sales: 12.43m (9.84m excluding Monster Hunter 4 an including Professor Layton)

Vita total sales: 5.21m

As you can see, 3^rd parties does perform rather well on the 3DS, and they do considerably better on Nintendo's handheld than on Sony's – but that's probably because of the much larger install base. The eleventh (or tenth, if we exclude MH4) best selling 3^rd party game on 3DS still sold better than the third best selling 3^rd party game on Vita, and the next 8 3^rd party games on 3DS all sold over 0.5m, while only the top 4 on Vita pulled the same numbers.

What's interesting to note, is that 9 of the top 10 3^rd party games on 3DS is from a Japanese publisher, while on Vita only 3 publishers of the Top 10 are from Japan, and the rest is from the West. The best performing Western 3^rd party publisher on 3DS outside the Top 10 is Ubisoft with Rayman 3D, with 0.57m sales.

Final analysis:

3^rd parties are doing well on the 3DS, compared to the Vita. While Western 3^rd parties seem to be doing better on Sony's handheld, than they do on Nintendo's; the best 12 selling 3DS 3^rd party games from a Western publisher all sold more than 0.3m, which means they all did at least as good as the tenth best selling 3^rd party game on Vita. While Capcom, Square Enix and Sega has multiple titles on the Top 10 on 3DS, EA and Ubisoft has had multiple titles on Vita's Top 10. Vita has a lot more violent games on this Top 10 list (AssCreed, CoD, Mortal Kombat etc), but the sales of Street Fighter and RE: Revelations on the 3DS shows that there definitely is a market for those kind of games on Nintendo's handheld as well.

If I was a 3^rd party publisher (no matter if I was a Japanese or Western publisher) I'd develop for the 3DS, as I would be more likely to see a return of my money on that console.

What do YOU think of this list? Which handheld would you develop a game for, and why?

These are the numbers I've used:

http://www.vgchartz.com/platform/42/nintendo-3ds/

http://www.vgchartz.com/platform/43/playstation-vita/

Here is a Top 10 Best Selling Vita games shared with the 3DS:

GAME                        3DS            VITA

Rayman Origins          0.07           0.40

FIFA 13                      0.22           0.30

FIFA 14                      0.14           0.21

Batman: Blackgate      0.10           0.19

LEGO LOTR                0.23          0.17

LEGO Marvel              0.29          0.16

Sega All-star Racing   0.20           0.15

LEGO Batman 2         0.30           0.13

LEGO Harry Potter     0.29          0.11

F1 2011                    0.12          0.09

These are the best selling VITA games that's also on the 3DS, NOT the best selling 3DS multiplats that's also on Vita.

TOP 11 3DS 3RD PARTY GAMES:

The 11th to 20th best selling 3rd party games on 3DS sold 5.58m, which is more than the Vita's Top 10...

It seems that Vita is getting some love from 3rd parties in Japan right now, but not in the West, where the situation seems different. A few western developers have been launching games for the 3DS (Lego Games, Skylanders, Batman etc.) while other seems to have abandoned handhelds definetely

It´s interesting to notice that most 3rd party efforts for Vita in that territory are basically ports of PS3 games, while in the case of the 3DS there´s a lot more exclusive stuff, games designed specifically for the hardware.


Just a question: isn´t LucasArts a Western developer? If so, then the best seller game on the 3ds from a Western Developer would be Lego Star Wars, right?

Never realized that despite the lack of fucks given by the western market for the Vita (mainly US) that their games have sold best. May I also point out the difference in who is publishing these 3rd party games from Japan. 3DS has SQEX, Capcom, Sega etc. vs Vitas Tecmo, Namco, NIS etc. Seems that 3DS just receives the bigger franchises which naturally will receive better sales. Lots of smaller publishers seem to be finding success on Vita though as they dont have to compete with the likes of Dragon Quest, MonHun or Nintendo's plethora of 1st party titles

@Bolded: Well... erhh... you see... It's like this... that... hmm, well yes, I think you're right! This has to be rectified!

But perhaps that's why 3rd parties are doing better on 3DS than on PSV: they're creating original content  instead of porting older games?

That is quite an interesting observation. I wonder how those smaller publishers would do on 3DS.

I had a quick look into that, and it seems they're still doing better on 3DS; Level 5 must be considered a small publisher, yes? 0.64m. Marvelous Entertainment; 0.61m. Namco: 0.58m, times 2 actually! Namco has 2 0.58m selling games ^^ So I guess your theory didn't hold up...

where is Konami whith Castlevania and MGS ????

Best selling Konami game is Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D with 0.34m

Exactely.  Content that you can´t find in a different device. Some people will just prefer to buy the home console version, specially when the Vita version is inferior, like the case of Rayman Legends

Monster Hunter is about the only third party game that interests me on handhelds.