May 8, 2013January 10, 2019

Become a PlayStation Mobile Publisher for Free

This summer we’re throwing down the gauntlet for PlayStation Mobile development and are removing any existing barriers to get your brainchild of a game on this new PlayStation platform. As you saw with our recent Indie Arcade event at GDC, we’re always looking to support new developer talent, so we’ve decided to waive the $99 publisher license fee for PlayStation Mobile, which means you can bring your games to PlayStation Vita or any PlayStation-certified device free of cost.

Those of you who want to throw your hat into the ring of PlayStation Mobile development now have the perfect opportunity to place your game alongside popular titles like Haunt the House: Terrortown and Beats Slider.

If you’ve been sitting on a gem of a mobile title, or found yourself with some extra time this summer, now’s the time to jump in! Starting on Tuesday, May 7th the Publisher License Fee for PlayStation Mobile will be waived. Check out the PlayStation Mobile Dev Portal for more information.

PS Vita owners will be able to download the games mentioned in this post from the PlayStation Mobile section of PlayStation Store; Owners of PlayStation-certified devices can obtain them through the PlayStation Mobile Store – click here for full instructions.

Also, be sure to check out our newly redesigned PlayStation Mobile website, which has now has a games section, a direct link to the Dev Portal, and a link to download the Mobile store to your PlayStation-certified device.

We’ve seen some really cool games already come to PlayStation Mobile and can’t wait to check out what you can come up with next!

Comments are closed.

61 Comments

10 Author Replies

Gorvi
May 8, 2013 at 7:08 am PDT

Are there any plans to expand the number of supported devices for PlayStation Mobile? I’m planning on getting an S4 soon and would love to have some of these games on there since I don’t always have my Vita on me.
- Sarah Thomson
  May 9, 2013 at 10:05 am PDT
  
  Hi Gorvi!
  Thanks for the question, we’re always looking to expand our roster of certified devices. I can’t comment what’s coming down the pipe, but keep your eyes peeled for new device partnership announcements.
Scoobdude
May 8, 2013 at 7:20 am PDT

I have a nexus 4, galaxy nexus, nexus 7 and an sIII in my home. Any news on when those will be supported? would be great if you guys supported at least stock android devices.
Xer0Signal
May 8, 2013 at 7:28 am PDT

If I’m currently just learning how to make games, does it make any sense to register now? I figure since it’s free, why not? But, I’m not sure exactly when I’d make use of it. Kind of a dumb question, I guess, but, I’m hovering over the “agree” button on the Register page, and, not entirely sure that I should, ATM.

Either way, this is pretty awesome, and another awesome step to getting more stuff on your platform. Keep it up!
- Sarah Thomson
  May 9, 2013 at 10:06 am PDT
  
  Yo Xer0Signal,
  
  As you pointed out, it’s free so why the heck not? Whenever you’re ready to jump into PlayStation Mobile development you’ll be good to go!
hypersk_us
May 8, 2013 at 7:30 am PDT

Thanks for the support for the indie developers!

I’m looking up to register and make my own mobile games ^w^
- Sarah Thomson
  May 9, 2013 at 10:14 am PDT
  
  Hey hypersk_us,
  
  We love indies, true story. Thanks for your interest in developing for PlayStation Mobile! Cant’ wait to see what you you start working on.
Fardeenah
May 8, 2013 at 7:39 am PDT

does that mean vita will get a few homebrews now? free on psn store?? that would be the dream
NashTheSlash
May 8, 2013 at 7:55 am PDT

Removing barriers to getting our game on this service? How about allowing non Microsoft programming languages?
antibolo
May 8, 2013 at 7:56 am PDT

Still no Mac SDK. Meh.
psychochromatic
May 8, 2013 at 8:27 am PDT

I would *love* to actually sign up and release on the Vita, but the limited country access is still in effect; if you’re not in one of the handful of accepted countries, that’s it. No publishing ability for you!
KosmoCrisis
May 8, 2013 at 8:38 am PDT

Sony doesn’t really support Mac. I’m surprised Content Manager for Vita works on Mac. No PSM SDK on Mac is a real loss.

Is the PSM fee being waived only for the summer months as is partially mentioned in the first sentence?
Dpen00
May 8, 2013 at 8:42 am PDT

Where are the games from all the studios that signed up for PSM over a year ago? There must be something very wrong with the service seeing as how little support it has and is receiving. I was really hoping PSM would get some of my favorite mobile games on the iPhone and iPad and port them to a more suitable gaming device like my PS Vita. As a gamer I’m very disappointed with the current PSM service and offerings.
snakeeyes211
May 8, 2013 at 8:43 am PDT

Awesome news
Dpen00
May 8, 2013 at 8:43 am PDT

Where are most of these developers that signed up? (minus the few who have actually released PSM titles)

Japanese studios:

ACQUIRE Corp.
ALPHA UNIT CO., LTD
ALVION Inc.
ARC SYSTEM WORKS CO.,LTD.
ARTDINK CORPORATION
ASCII MEDIA WORKS Inc.
ASGARD Co.,Ltd.
ASOBIMO,Inc.
BoobyTrap.,Ltd.
CYBERFRONT Corporation
D3PUBLISHER INC.
eitarosoft, inc.
ENTERBRAIN, INC.
FOG inc.
FromSoftware, Inc
G STYLE CO.,LTD.
Gameloft
Granzella Inc.
GungHo Online Entertainment, Inc.
GUST CO.,LTD.
HAMSTER Corporation
IDEA FACTORY Co., Ltd.
IMAGEEPOCH INC.
Index Corporation
Kadokawa Games, Ltd.
Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co., Ltd.
KAGA CREATE CO.,LTD.
KAYAC Inc.
MAGES. Inc.
MarvelousAQL Inc.
Mobile Internet Technology Co.,Ltd.
NCM Entertainment Corporation / Forever Entertainment S.A. Group
NEX ENTERTAINMENT CO.,LTD.
Nippon Ichi Software, Inc.
PROTOTYPE CO.,LTD.
Pygmy Studio.Co., Ltd.
Q Entertainment Inc.
Rocket Studio,
SEGA Corporation
SPIKE CHUNSOFT Co.,Ltd.
STARFISH-SD Inc.
SUCCESS Corporation
SYNC Inc.
TAKUYO KOUGYO CO.,LTD.
TECMO KOEI GAMES Co., Ltd.
Zener Net Works Inc.
Dpen00
May 8, 2013 at 8:44 am PDT

European and American studios:

Action Button Ent
Albino Pixel Ltd.
Atomicom Ltd.
Beatnik Games Ltd.
Big Head Games Ltd.
bitforge AG
Crash Lab Ltd.
Eclipse Games S.C.
Eiconic Games Ltd
Futurlab Ltd.
Green Hill Ltd.
Happion Laboratories
Hellfire Games
Honeyslug Ltd.
Icon Games Entertainment Ltd.
Laughing Jackal Ltd.
Mobirate Ltd.
Muteki Games
Necrosoft
NuChallenger, LLC
Omni Systems Ltd.
Origin8 Technologies Ltd.
Playerthree Ltd.
Pompom Software Ltd.
Quirkat Inc.
Retroburn Game Studios Ltd.
Ripstone Ltd.
SCEE Research & Development
SFB Games Ltd.
Spinning Head Software Ltd.
Tama Global
Team 17 Digital Ltd.
Thumbs Up
THQ
Tikipod Ltd.
Triangle Factory bvba
Vlambeer vof
Wired Productions Ltd.
Yippee Entertainment Ltd

That’s nearly 100 studios.
darktonicgames
May 8, 2013 at 8:52 am PDT

Very nice! We are totally on board to release our new game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcCm5FseldM PS Vita is a perfect platform for Attack of the Wall Street Titan!
DarkGahro
May 8, 2013 at 8:52 am PDT

Are those games pages going to updated? There are several games on the PSM service and available to purchase on the store that aren’t mentioned on those pages. It’s a bit confusing when the game pages say “All PlayStation Mobile Games”, when in fact that’s not the case.
- Sarah Thomson
  May 9, 2013 at 10:17 am PDT
  
  Hi there DarkGahro,
  
  It’s a work in progress, we’re getting as many up as we can. As the volume of titles increases we won’t be able to feature ALL games, but the ones we feel deserve extra attention. It’s a great way to help you the gamer discover the hidden gems!
NashTheSlash
May 8, 2013 at 8:58 am PDT

Also Linux dev support?
siriusbee
May 8, 2013 at 9:03 am PDT

Linux/Mac SDK please.
Elvick_
May 8, 2013 at 9:12 am PDT

Sad. Anyone serious about making a good game can scrape up $100. Here comes even more shovelware.

I understand that sales are terribad, but that is your own fault for segregation, missing features that would add value (cross save, trophies), and most importantly its not even available in all countries.
Zeek_Industries
May 8, 2013 at 9:13 am PDT

When is Mexico coming to the list of authorized publishers? What would I have to do if I have a Mexican SEN ID and would like to become a publisher?
GamerBozo919
May 8, 2013 at 9:37 am PDT

How Sony has fallen. Reeks of desperation for a platform nobody cares or know about. It appears the folks at SCE is officially out of touch
KazeEternal
May 8, 2013 at 10:18 am PDT

Excellent, now can I get better Visual Studio support? you’re IDE is nice, but I have different API’s for different platforms in my code base and it is annoying to have to share between the two. I don’t like wasting time on tools to get around this short coming.
wilfareus
May 8, 2013 at 10:43 am PDT

This is great news, hope you guys can add Trophy support for PSM sometime in the future and allow it to be integrated in the main SEN store!
saintaqua
May 8, 2013 at 10:46 am PDT

Bring trophy support asap! I want to play some of these games, but we were promised trophies and I’m ready for it! I can’t wait to see all of the games this brings in, hopefully free ones too!
Techni
May 8, 2013 at 10:49 am PDT

Thats awesome, please enable visual basic support in your IDE and ill start developing for it the same day you do.
I dont have time to code in archaic C-style.
Techni
May 8, 2013 at 10:52 am PDT

Also, bring ps3 support. Id like to play on a tv
Jotamide
May 8, 2013 at 10:52 am PDT

Please add trophies to PSM. That alone would boost it’s popularity enormously!
NYPUNK88
May 8, 2013 at 11:21 am PDT

Classy move Sony keep this up and next-gen will be yours.
- Sarah Thomson
  May 9, 2013 at 10:18 am PDT
  
  Thanks NYPUNK88! We appreciate the rah rahs. =)
Kchow23
May 8, 2013 at 11:35 am PDT

Ugh! secondary accounts will be the bane of my existence!! Please allow secondary accounts to upgrade to master… it won’t allow me to register for PSM.
tylerh1701
May 8, 2013 at 12:25 pm PDT

+1 to trophies being added to PSM games.
TheUndertaker85
May 8, 2013 at 1:12 pm PDT

Does this mean that we will be able to test on PS Vita now? That ability was locked before, making it hard to know if creations would be able to work with the device the way they’re intended to.

I also have to echo the sentiment of others here. Please open these Mobile titles up to trophy support and the ability to use saves from one device on others. These could be some good selling points to Mobile titles, even if the support is limited to PS Vita/PS3.

I’m glad to see you’re opening this up to everybody without a cost though!
- Sarah Thomson
  May 9, 2013 at 10:19 am PDT
  
  Hi TheUndertaker85,
  
  The ability to test of Vita has been reinstated for a while now, came in an SDK update over a month ago. Go nuts with your testing!
Kong_Angantyr
May 8, 2013 at 1:19 pm PDT

While $99 isn’t much of a hurdle for someone with a decent game to sell, this is still welcome news. (Also remember that the $99 was an annual license, so over time that license fee could start to eat into your profits.)

This is actually pretty cool, because now those of us who might be interested in coding up something for the Vita–but not necessarily interested in making money off of it–can do our thing without having to cover the cost of the developer license. (I’m not sure if it means something I code up can be completely free, or if it will need to have a small charge to cover Sony’s piece of the pie, but regardless, this is awesome.)

I did take some time to play around with the tools while it was still in beta and I was quite impressed with everything. I did a couple “Hello World” type applications, but didn’t want to spring for the license until I had an idea good enough where I thought I could recover the $99 annual license cost.

With that hurdle gone, I might have to revisit some of my ideas and see if I can bring something to the Vita that is worthwhile. :)
Major_Hoare
May 8, 2013 at 1:30 pm PDT

This is great news thanks Sarah and team! Lotta young’uns will have a chance to bring something neat to playstation now that you’ve agreed to drop the $99 fee.
- Sarah Thomson
  May 9, 2013 at 10:20 am PDT
  
  Excellent statement Major_Hoare! That’s the idea here, anyone can achieve the dream of publishing on a PlayStation platform now! Very exciting.
OmniCloud
May 8, 2013 at 4:02 pm PDT

Good step in the right direction but the biggest hurdles need to be tackled…From my limited knowledge I’ll try to highlight them in order of importance.

More countries need to be available…Simple but important
More platforms need to support PSM…again, simple but important I have a Nexus 7 and even though I love Sony’s newest Xperia Z, I won’t be upgrading any time soon. Popular phones like iphone/Galaxy/nexus need to have PSM
Trophies are ABSOLUTELY IMPORTANT to the Playstation experience. It’s where your gamer life goes and how it is tracked. Besides the personalization aspect, it’s also how your friends see what games you are playing and it’s basically free advertising and word-of-mouth for small games like this.
Android/Mac SDK…Linux and Mac are just getting more and more popular as home desktop OS…Get with it Sony…

As stated, definitely a move in the right direction, but PSM should already be flooded with good $1 and $2 games by now. Because it’s not, that hurdle needs to be overcome.

Countries, platforms, trophies, Mac/Linux SDK…
- Sarah Thomson
  May 9, 2013 at 10:23 am PDT
  
  Great suggestions and feedback OmniCloud. We hear everything you folks says, good and bad, and take it to heart. While we can’t make everyone’s asks a reality and as fast as we’d all like, we are looking to evolve and grow this little platform. It’s early days and we are so happy to have you all along the way to help shape it and make it better.
REv9k
May 8, 2013 at 5:30 pm PDT

Looking forward to trophy support… Coming soon, right?
Elvick_
May 8, 2013 at 5:44 pm PDT

@33: PSM is Android development. And the entire point was to make it easier to develop on Android, since if you developed directly to the play store… you have to deal with countless different hardware, and at getting your game to work properly on all of them. Which has yet to happen for anything from what I’ve bought and seen in reviews.

Adding more for the sake of more just causes the same issue Android itself has.
Conaaando
May 8, 2013 at 5:50 pm PDT

Very interesting… But are brazilian developers welcome?
SNORLAXex
May 8, 2013 at 5:59 pm PDT

Man, that’s one trippy trailer.
us1minis
May 8, 2013 at 6:01 pm PDT

I do reviews and news for a Site (PSPMinis) that covers PS Mobile. We used to cover Minis (as the name indicates), but with that over, we switched to PS Mobile.

The PS Mobile program has lots and lots of problems. The $99 fee was really not one of those problems. We’ve already had many reviewers quit because they just didn’t want to review such poor quality titles, and honestly, I’ve been thinking about it as well. Opening the flood gates is going to make the quality problem even worse.

And @35, PS Mobile isn’t really Android development. Instead, it’s for a virtual machine that runs on both the Vita and Android. But think of it as Sony creating a fictional gaming handheld and making an emulator that runs on both Vita and Android. But that fictional handheld has worse specs than the PSP did, all in all. It has a smidgen more Ram, but the graphical power is actually worse.

PS Mobile is basically the worst of both worlds.
cobrafang
May 8, 2013 at 7:26 pm PDT

How about adding some game to playstation mobile that are actually fun. I just got my first smartphone and scrolling through the google play store I see so many free and 99 cent games that are simple (sure) but way fun and nice to look at too. I don’t ever have to pay for simple addictive games on google play (or even iOS app store) because there are lots of fun addictive free games and apps and more coming all the time. Looking at playstation mobile I see very few 99 cent games and a lot of $1.99 and up games that don’t really look that great and addictive either. Can Vita playstation mobile get some developers that make the popular Android and iOS games like Temple Run, Angry Birds, Bejeweled Blitz, and the huge assortment of fun stuff on our phones to play on our 5″ Vita screens.
ishralene09
May 8, 2013 at 9:23 pm PDT

OK this is frustrating.
I am a Filipino living in Japan having a US PSN account. I want to ask 2 questions:

1. Legally I can create games for PSM since I’m in Japan. But as my PSN is for US region, do I need to sign up for a Japanese account?

2. Is there an English option on your Japanese website at all? I can’t sign up properly because I can’t read/write Nihongo.

BTW @39 seems you love touch-based games. No button love? Perhaps what you want to ask for are demos, because how will you know a game is not addictive if you have not played it yet?
- Sarah Thomson
  May 9, 2013 at 10:28 am PDT
  
  Hi ishralene09,
  
  Yes, your situation is sticky. The site would compute your region and not allow an SEN account from another region to sign up. It’s how we know if you’re in a region that we are currently open to. I believe you will need to create a Japanese SEN account to sign up as long as you’re physically there. Sorry! Hope that helps.
Bicgoozgetten-69
May 9, 2013 at 7:44 am PDT

We need some non gaming app like a calendar or notes please somebody make either one.
Farmer-Willis
May 9, 2013 at 10:36 am PDT

Pretty cool.
Archaga
May 9, 2013 at 10:50 am PDT

Any updates as to when and how devs will be able to gain full Unity support into publishing their games on Sony platforms? Getting a small group together and the possibility of publishing by the end of the year/early next, would be nice.
- Sarah Thomson
  May 9, 2013 at 10:58 am PDT
  
  Great question Archaga! Yes, Unity is coming for PlayStation Mobile and our other platforms. I can’t speak to dates yet, but your time frame could work for access to Unity for PlayStation Mobile! Stay tuned.
Archaga
May 9, 2013 at 11:02 am PDT

Thanks, will do.
DarkSandStorms
May 9, 2013 at 11:43 am PDT

Bicgoozgetten-69
Yea I’m not sure if sony wants us to focus on just games. I am not as experienced in games though I’d like to get into it more. I was thinking of putting together a suit of applications just like that for PSM first though. I think that would add to the Vita’s and it would essentially turn it into a mini-Tablet. So I will definitely be trying to put together some utilities for use with the Vita such as a Note application/PDF reader etc. And it’ll really be up to Sony to decide if they allow it or not. I don’t see a problem but if they want PSM to be seen as a “Games only” area then I can respect that. Stay tuned I guess!
Kedaro
May 9, 2013 at 12:29 pm PDT

This is a bold and very welcomed move, It makes it a lot easier for people like me, who have been struggling solo with their hobbies for years, extremely impressive Sony, Thank you!

I read that you plan on incorporating other types of coding structures into the sdk, would this be something that one(myself) could assume would be akin to that of unity’s tools, and game building software(ie. java etc.)?
Or maybe a function that works with unity synergistically?
Kedaro
May 9, 2013 at 12:53 pm PDT

Nevermind i read a previous reply, and I think I got my answer about unity, and it’s synergy with psmobile, thanks!
Kchow23
May 9, 2013 at 1:44 pm PDT

Would having my sub account on my PS Vita, but using my master account to register as a PS Mobile dev cause any issues when testing my games?
xStarQuakex
May 9, 2013 at 2:32 pm PDT

Unfortunately, when I attempt to create a publisher App Key Ring using the PSM Publishing Utility, it claims I do not have sufficient entitlement (please see this image: http://i.imgur.com/MndKN5p.png). Why does this happen if the $100 fee has been waived?
teh-posh
May 9, 2013 at 3:19 pm PDT

Will expand the “Free Games” section you can find on the Vita’s PSN store?