First generation multiplat engine port.
Give them a year or two for optimization and UT3 games will look a lot better on the system.

Compared to other already released ports on the Vita the difference is pretty pathetic.

Yes, but this was a direct port from a third party using midleware.
This is more or less an example of what you can expect from most third party ports. This isn't a flagship title unlike most of the other ports released so far (Wipeout, Uncharted, etc) and the developers did not get to benefit from first and second party developers playing with the hardware.

This is pretty much the first direct port on UT3. They probably have not gotten which elements they can scale down to get etc etc, and they did not have easy access to Vita hardware tricks and internal devs unlike japanese developers who were given higher priority due to the expected success in the 'native' market

As it stands, it is quite understandable, and it simply shows that right now the Vita does not have a lot of high quality tools and toolkits for cross platform devs.

If you look at the other 'ports' that look better, i would bet that they are a) from Japanese developers who are B) using their own in house engine.

Neither Wiipeout nor Uncharted are ports. I was referring more to Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Ninja Gaiden Sigma +, and quite a few other solid if not near perfect ports.

UMvC 3 is from an A) Japanese dev using B) An in house engine (MTFramework)
NGS+ is from an A) Japanese dev using B) an in house engine (unnamed ninja gaiden engine, presumably based on the DoA engine, incrementally updated.)

Why is this important you might ask?
Well, Japanese development teams tend to employ larger amount of developer and artist staff, and having both the designers of the engine you are using under your employment as well as preferential treatment from the hardware designers leads to significant advantages.

Mortal Kombat's port represents what can be reasonably expected from any 3rd party developer at this time. It is using an external middleware engine (UT3) with a smaller amount of staff and limited developmental insight as to the platform they are deploying on.

Honestly they were probably targeting iOS/Android for the majority of this development branch as it would have been easier to get the UDK and test hardware for those platforms and then revamp it for Vita later then it would be to get pre-release code from Epic as well as prototype hardware from sony.

Just to clarify, i'm not disagreeing with you on this point. I'm just saying that it is unfair to compare this studio against ones that are ten times larger and that have has access to the vita hardware for so much longer and expect it to come up favorably.

Considering the situation they are in i would call the Mortal Kombat port a good service to the fans and while i do expect them to get better quickly we really must take into consideration that the Vita is effectively new ground and that large Japanese developers do in fact have an advantage over small western developers at this moment.

I do expect with Epic funneling more and more effort into the Vita version of UT3 that the quality and availability of tools and insight will increase dramaticly in the coming years, but as it stands i would not scoff at NetherRealm's effort this early in their lifetime, even if they are handeling well established ip.

I'd imagine that UE3 would be fairly well supported on the Vita considering Epic showed off an upgraded version of their "Epic Citadel" tech demo on the Vita when it was first announced.

Yes, Epic did.

Epic, who has under their employ the people who made the engine were able to optimize the engine and game assets for the given constraints of the platform.

Dungeon Defenders (iOS/Android version) doesn't look as good as Infinity Blade either.

You don't understand, I wasn't saying that Mortal Kombat should look as good as something the creators of the engine can make, I'm saying that it should be supported, considering they were used by Sony to proudly show off the power of the system, and then the president of the company ends up talking shit about the Vita 6 months later and why they aren't making games for it, because it is quote, "Not a phone".

I am not getting your point here.
Are you criticizing Epic?

Yeah, they were responsible for showing off the graphical prowess of the Vita for Sony, and then the turn around and insult the system with ignorant fanboyish comments to explain why they won't be making games for it.

there are some systems their development teams do not see as profitable outside of providing middleware.
we don't have gears of war on ps3 and i don't see an unreal tournament on the wii. Epic doesn't develop too many games as it stands.