Sony challenges Nintendogs with PlayStation Vita Pets

Sony seems to be borrowing quite a few concepts from Nintendo of late. After Sony's failed attempt at creating its own mascot brawler with PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, the company is now looking to mimic Nintendo's popular pet sim Nintendogs with a new game called PlayStation Vita Pets. Despite it's name, it seems to be only focused on dogs, but maybe the broad term of "pets" will allow for future DLC like cats? Either way, it's too early to be talking of DLC as PlayStation Vita Pets isn't due out until 2014.

Tiny puppy dressed in a hippo outfit? I'm sold. Game of the Year.

Spiral House, the studio behind the project, gave a brief outline of the game on European portion of Sony's blog, with creative director Kevin Oxland touching on a few things that make this game different from others *cough* Nintendogs.

For starters, the dogs speak. I don't mean bark, they literally speak.

"We set out to make something that was more than just a pet sim – we wanted to make something that felt like a real game, with characters, fun and adventure, so that’s exactly what we did," explained Oxland. "We also wanted to focus on the dogs themselves, which may seem an obvious thing to say, but making them move, act and speak (!) in a very convincing way for the scope of the game we had in mind, was not easy."

In the game you pick from four different puppies (I see a Husky!), each with their own personality, sense of humor, and character traits. You'll do the normal human-dog relationship things — bathing, training, learning tricks, stroking, feeding, walking, and even dressing up for some of you who like to put your pet through that — but once you've gained the necessary skills with your pup you'll be able to adventure to Castlewood Island, a place with puzzles and adventure. Oxland even hinted at a few extended AR features that will be announced in the coming months.

No exact release date was announced, but you can expect PlayStation Vita Pets to launch in 2014. Currently, it was only announced on the European blog, but I'm sure the U.S. PlayStation Blog will be updated shortly.

[PS Blog]