While Rovio still leans very heavily on one game franchise for its success, there's no question that it's a big company these days -- big enough, in fact, that it's venturing into publishing for the first time. Its new Rovio Stars division will look for a handful of promising third-party games to support, giving them both the resources and exposure needed to shine. The first titles to make the cut are Nitrome's upcoming puzzler Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage and 5 Ants' Tiny Thief. We don't know if Rovio's guiding hand will be enough to give these games a major boost, but we can get a taste of what's to come through the Icebreaker trailer after the break.

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming

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Via: Rovio

Source: Rovio Stars

Sony's already got a low barrier to entry for developers on its PlayStation Mobile platform, which encompasses the PlayStation Vita handheld game console and a variety of smartphones -- just $99 for a license enables publishing across all PlayStation Mobile devices. Apparently that fee is too much for some folks, so Sony's waiving it altogether. Starting right now (as of yesterday, actually), Sony's "removing any existing barriers" between developers and the PS Mobile platform by dropping the publishing fee, thusly making it all the easier for devs to push their games to the Vita and various smartphones. There are already some great indie games featured on Sony's PS Mobile store, including Vlambeer's Super Crate Box and Super Icon Ltd.'s Life of Pixel, and this paves the way for even more.

Of course, Apple's iOS publishing fee is $99 per year and the App Store is certainly more flush with content than Sony's Mobile store, which tells us it isn't the license fee that's stopping people from pushing their games to PS Mobile.

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Software, HD, Sony

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Source: US PlayStation Blog, EU PlayStation Blog