The PlayStation Vita was the big star of Sony‘s press conference today at Gamescom 2011 in Cologne, Germany, and Ubisoft took advantage of that by revealing its own production slate for the upcoming device. Since games are currently in development for the Vita for release by the French publisher, and all of them should be names you know. Only one of them comes as a surprise though, and a welcome one for fans of Sony’s previous handheld platform, the PlayStation Portable.
It’s now officially confirmed that Lumines will return to its portable roots with a PS Vita release. The block-matching puzzle game was a big hit, and an early one, for the PSP, popular enough to spawn a sequel and eventual console ports. Its mix of beautifully rendered abstract digital background and pulsing techno music, coupled with fast-paced, Tetris-style gameplay, will certainly be welcome by Vita owners. It will be interesting to hear how the Vita’s touch-based surfaces fit in with the game’s controls.
Ubisoft also revealed the completely unsurprising (and, in some cases, already known) news that Dungeon Hunter Alliance, Rayman Origins, Michael Jackson: The Experience are all coming, as are new entries in the Assassin’s Creed and Asphalt racing series. No release dates yet for anything, but you can probably look for at least a few — I’m looking at Dungeon Hunter and Rayman specifically (speculation) — to arrive with the device’s launch.
