The PS Vita Thread - Remote Play for all PS4 Games

[DragonInstall]

Gamefaqs pole about interest for vita is very very low.

[Friendly]

What people who think touchscreen phones offer the same gameplay as a PS Vita forget is that PS Vita has buttons (and several times the processing power).

Nice Kotaku writeup:
http://kotaku.com/5884517/the-playstati ... tag=review

[Friendly]

Gamefaqs pole about interest for vita is very very low.

What's a Gamefaqs pole? Anyway, Sony appears to be positioning PS Vita as a high class portable gaming device for mature gamers. So the juvenile low-education crowd that frequents gamefaqs (the type of people who have a hard time with coherent grammar and spelling) may not exactly be Sony's target group. Conversely, there is lots of PS Vita buzz on NeoGAF. (Better spelling and grammar, too).

[Estebang]

I'm still very interested in the Vita, but I'm not getting one until at least the Ys IV remake is released in English. It should also be clear at that point whether it's failed hard enough that it won't be getting adequate third-party support in the future...in that case, I'll just finally get that PS3 instead.

Sony needs to completely ignore the casual/nongamer market with the Vita and focus entirely on courting the hardcore. They simply can't sell the thing to smartphone devotees; it's pointless to try. I really don't want to see another PS Home or gobs of Facebook shit on the system.

[Friendly]

Sony needs to completely ignore the casual/nongamer market with the Vita and focus entirely on courting the hardcore. They simply can't sell the thing to smartphone devotees; it's pointless to try. I really don't want to see another PS Home or gobs of Facebook shit on the system.

Agreed. Cave's PS Vita shmup will be a good first step

All that social network bullshit is a waste of life and perfectly good bandwidth.

[BulletMagnet]

Sony needs to completely ignore the casual/nongamer market with the Vita and focus entirely on courting the hardcore. They simply can't sell the thing to smartphone devotees; it's pointless to try. I really don't want to see another PS Home or gobs of Facebook shit on the system.

It would certainly be nice to see, but I wouldn't hold my breath: "sorta-gamers" are where the real money is at these days, since there are more of them and they're less demanding.

[louisg]

Sony appears to be positioning PS Vita as a high class portable gaming device for mature gamers. So the juvenile low-education crowd that frequents gamefaqs (the type of people who have a hard time with coherent grammar and spelling) may not exactly be Sony's target group. Conversely, there is lots of PS Vita buzz on NeoGAF. (Better spelling and grammar, too).

This is what a marketing victim looks like. Beware! It could happen to you too!

[Strider77]

I got one... wipeout is very satisfying.

[Khan]

Today I stopped at the local shopping centre there was a Game store....let me tell you by I was umming and arring for more than 30 minutes deciding whether to purchase now or later in the end I thought i would wait a little while longer and see how the price pans out. Never sweated so much for thinking about buying a games system lol

[brentsg]

I got one... wipeout is very satisfying.

Yes it is.

Also, if I was going to blow stupid money on one crazy overpriced item... give me a 60" OLED TV. That's what the Vita has taught me so far.

[Cuilan]

Picked mine up at Gamestop earlier today. Also stopped by the local Sony store and got the official starter kit along with Wipeout 2048. I don't know if it's just the one in my area, but the Sony store was selling Wipeout for $30. So after all was said & done, all this stuff cost me $289.

[Friendly]

Sony appears to be positioning PS Vita as a high class portable gaming device for mature gamers. So the juvenile low-education crowd that frequents gamefaqs (the type of people who have a hard time with coherent grammar and spelling) may not exactly be Sony's target group. Conversely, there is lots of PS Vita buzz on NeoGAF. (Better spelling and grammar, too).

This is what a marketing victim looks like. Beware! It could happen to you too!

Hahahah, no.

1) There doesn't seem to be much marketing
2) I didn't even buy one yet

[Barrakketh]

Add Dynasty Warriors to that (and if Ridge Racer wasn't delayed, that too) and it looks a lot like the PSP launch

Sony needs to completely ignore the casual/nongamer market with the Vita and focus entirely on courting the hardcore.

Because that worked well for the PSP...

[Friendly]

I'd like to add, of course PS Vita *is* competing with smart-phones, even though it's not really a competition as far as gaming is concerned: Given the choice to play the same game on a PS Vita or touchscreen phone, no real gamer would play it on the phone. Vita's problem is: How can Sony convince smartphone owning non-core gamers of the added benefit of a dedicated portable gaming device?

Call of Duty might help for mainstream appeal.

[neorichieb1971]

Well in most peoples eyes the reason for not buying one (imo) is the use it will get.

I bought a PSP. It got used for novelty/showing off purposes and then got demoted to the "I'll get round to it later" pile.

I've also heard that alot of people don't like playing complex games on handhelds. For me personally, I only used to play simple games like Space invaders. It was cool, but only at one game at a time. I could not do marathon sessions.

If a Mr driller game came out for PSV I would have to rethink though.

[Friendly]

It got used for novelty/showing off purposes

That's a really terrible reason to buy anything, ever.

I got my PSP after there were lots of cool exclusives I wanted to play, which I then proceeded to do.

[neorichieb1971]

I never bought it for that reason, It ended up being used for that reason.

[Ex-Cyber]

I think people are confusing the fact that the Vita is a dedicated games handheld you cannot compare it to a smartphone because frankly the smartphone games are pretty basic only maybe a handful are what you could call "Real" games

That's mostly not a limitation of smartphones, but rather the way that the market happened to unfold. It's presumed to be a "causal" market, and it's much easier for a startup to produce casual games or cheesy licensed games than "real" games. I think the biggest problem smartphones have right now is the avalanche of crap you have to wade through in App Store / Android Market to find anything really worthwhile ("casual" or not, game or app); part of the advantage of publishing on console is that you get access to a relatively exclusive sales channel, and it's not clear that smartphones can offer that without destroying the relevance of their respective platforms.

What people who think touchscreen phones offer the same gameplay as a PS Vita forget is that PS Vita has buttons

Yes, smartphones with buttons don't exist, and if even if they did they certainly wouldn't be sold by Sony with PlayStation co-branding, amirite?

(and several times the processing power).

Itt will probably be the other way around in ~18 months (and has really already gone from "several" to "two" over the course of 2011) because that's just how the smartphone industry rolls. If PS Vita has any lasting technical advantage at all, it will have to be the software platform and developer tools. Such an advantage is plausible, but by no means guaranteed.

[Friendly]

What people who think touchscreen phones offer the same gameplay as a PS Vita forget is that PS Vita has buttons

Yes, smartphones with buttons don't exist, and if even if they did they certainly wouldn't be sold by Sony with PlayStation co-branding, amirite?

Yes, it has buttons. But instead of 2 analog sticks like Vita or 1 like PSP it has 0, which means it's just as useless for crowd-pleaser FPS games as regular smartphones. Which is probably why Xperia Play didn't get any PSP ports since it was released a year ago. Furthermore, Xperia Play only has a fraction of Vita's processing power and is currently being sold for ~330 EUR ($440 USD). What's your point? Or were you just looking for something to disagree with?

[null1024]

I only know one person in real life out of 15 gamers that is getting a Vita. I only know one person that has a 3DS. As a gamer, I don't see that as success. When the PS1 launched every Tom, Dick and Harry bought one.

Well, this is really a matter of location -- although I still don't know anyone who's actually getting the Vita, I know 8 people with 3DSes.

[Blackbird]

What people who think touchscreen phones offer the same gameplay as a PS Vita forget is that PS Vita has buttons (and several times the processing power).

Yes, any hardcore gamer will tell you that the Vita is better than a phone for playing games, because the Vita is a dedicated gaming platform with tactile inputs specifically designed for that. However, we are not the people that Sony needs to convince. "Mom" doesn't give a damn if it has buttons or not when she's buying a handheld for her kids, she just reads the feature list. "This plays games, and is a phone!?" Great!

Casual gamers don't really understand or appreciate the need for things like "a d-pad with precise inputs" or "good feedback on the a button". They don't play games seriously enough or often enough to be discriminating about details like that, touch screens are good enough for casual play. For them, smartphones are equally good gaming platforms to the Vita, because any difference doesn't really matter to them.

[Strider77]

Also, if I was going to blow stupid money on one crazy overpriced item... give me a 60" OLED TV. That's what the Vita has taught me so far.

Sign me up also... OLED for the win.

[louisg]

Casual gamers don't really understand or appreciate the need for things like "a d-pad with precise inputs" or "good feedback on the a button". They don't play games seriously enough or often enough to be discriminating about details like that, touch screens are good enough for casual play. For them, smartphones are equally good gaming platforms to the Vita, because any difference doesn't really matter to them.

Not only that, but as gamers who grew up using joysticks and d-pads, we're a little set in our ways. Sure, for traditional genres like platformers, touch screens suck. But what was the DS' big feature? A touchscreen. There are some great games on it that use it well. Kirby Canvas Curse and Ivy the Kiwi? come to mind, and strategy/adventure gaming (or anything similarly pointer-driven) is better with a touch screen. And I don't keep up with mobile gaming, but I'm sure there's some good stuff there too.

[shmuppyLove]

I've also heard that alot of people don't like playing complex games on handhelds. For me personally, I only used to play simple games like Space invaders. It was cool, but only at one game at a time. I could not do marathon sessions.

I'm the same way -- I have a DS and I love it, and there are tons of amazing games, but it's seriously uncomfortable to use for long stretches.

Maybe it's just my weak girly spaghetti noodle arms ...

[Friendly]

As I've said before, while I don't think occasional gamers (casuals) who sometimes play flash games on their phones are the target group of PS Vita, it's not harcore crazies like the poeple who populate this forum, either. It's adult mainstream gamers who play stuff like Modern Warfare. The decission to add a second analog stick may prove invaluable; and I bet Nintendo has already started to regret its stubborn refusal to have two sticks on 3DS.

[Wenchang]

Because that worked well for the PSP...

There were many casual friendly PSP games. They bundled a Madden game with the PSPs every year.

Not to mention: http://us.playstation.com/psp/systems/hannah.html

[Ex-Cyber]

What's your point? Or were you just looking for something to disagree with?

My point is that Vita is trying to maintain a category of device against broader market forces that threaten the relevance of such a category, it's not obvious that a handful of hardware features are enough to do so even if they were exclusive to that category, and they're not actually exclusive. Sony was blazing a trail with PSP in 2005; smartphone technology was in its infancy, and gaming on those platforms was an afterthought if it was a thought at all. Smartphone vendors are driving mobile hardware innovation now, including GPUs. In other words, the demands of smartphone vendors now constrain the competitive technology options that are realistically available to Sony. The only way I see Sony possibly pulling ahead here is if smartphone vendors double down on the thin chic at the high end and stick with smaller/slower chips for the sake of extending battery life.

Maybe software exclusivity and developer support infrastructure can keep Vita going. The original Xbox proved that being based on a commodity hardware platform isn't a death sentence, but that was also a tricky situation in which Microsoft was able to leverage dominance of the PC platform and still bled lots of money for the sake of establishing a foothold in a new (to them) market. Sony might be able to make Vita a success, but I think it'll be an uphill battle.

[null1024]

The decission to add a second analog stick may prove invaluable; and I bet Nintendo has already started to regret its stubborn refusal to have two sticks on 3DS.

Yeah. I saw a guy with that second stick add-on for the 3DS, and was pretty repulsed by the idea of getting it -- it just made the 3DS huge, and it seemed like Nintendo went "oh hey, whoops -- we forgot something". Yay early adoption, we all know the next 3DS revision will probably have the second stick [probably in the big space right beneath the ABXY buttons] and the additional Lz/Rz buttons.
Although, actually using the thing to play games isn't too bad. It's just really bloody clunky on your 3DS.


Also, I dunno what to say about the Vita's chances.

Older ["hardcore"] gamers might pick it up [or, they'll be dissatisfied with the Vita's issues [cost, limited backwards compatibility, proprietary and expensive memory card, etc] and buy a 3DS], younger gamers will probably get their parents to buy them a 3DS [hey, would you want your kid possibly breaking a $250 Vita or a $180 3DS? Not the best choices, but I can see which parents would go for, and then there's Nintendo's family-friendly image which helps, and the fact that your kid probably had a DS before], and the rest will just say "fuck em both" and play a bunch of $2 games they have on their iPod Touch or whatever.


also goddamnit, I want Wipeout 2048

[Friendly]

No actual sales numbers for Vita hardware and games yet, but last week 'Uncharted Golden Abyss' and 'FIFA Football for PS Vita' were the two best-selling video games in the UK.
http://www.chart-track.co.uk/index.jsp? ... &ct=110032

Jack Tretton (SCEA) has said the US-launch went "very well".
Of course this doesn't tell us much, but we can probably assume that Vita didn't completely bomb. Anecdotal evidence points to Vita not being sold out in most places.

Main problem is that Sony is doing so little advertising that most people don't even know Vita exists. I've read stories about Vita owners showing their new system to colleagues, who then went and bought Vitas, too. I wonder if it's Sony's strategy to have their customers do the marketing for them...

[Drum]

doooooooooooooooooooooooooooomed

EDIT:

Oh, turns out the chart positions mean nothing because everything sold horribly:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.ph ... tcount=115

dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomed