Well it’s finally here. The PlayStation Vita has hit the shelves and I swung by to pick mine up. I am really excited about this. Sure there is the issue of floundering sales in Japan. After the first week the Vita took a serious dive and last week the older PSP sold 2000 more units. Sony is confident that this won’t be the case in North America. PlayStation has been running a serious promotional campaign in major cities across the US to ensure that. What they really have on their side however is a great piece of equipment. The vita really is a game changer both for Sony and for gaming.
New Ways to Play
I will give you three reasons why the PS Vita is the game changer that PlayStation is reporting it to be. The first of which is the device itself. The device is thin and surprisingly light making it easy to play with for hours on end. It isn’t the only think that is small, the game cards are small too and the memory cards are ridiculously tiny.
It features a beautiful 5inch OLED screen that looks stunning. Combined with its quad core CPU and graphics chip the machine has the nicest looking portable graphics on the market.
Graphics are great but they aren’t what makes it innovative. There are more ways to play on the PS Vita than any other system out. Front and back touch screens, gyroscopic controls, six-access motion controls, a set of analogue sticks, and of course the regular buttons you’d expect on a PlayStation product.
A few launch titles have been accused of gratuitously using these new features but you can’t blame developers for wanting to experiment with these new controls in all the combinations they can think of. Games no longer have to all about thumbs, now developers can engage players in all new ways. Take Little Deviants for example, it may not be the best game in the PS Vita line up but it illustrates the abilities of the Vita beautifully.
Uncharted: Golden Abyss is also a great example. The touch screen can be used to navigate obstacles and solve puzzles while the back touch pad can zoom you rifle or camera. One of the coolest features I found in the new Uncharted title is how, like in other shooters, you can use the analogue sticks to aim but you can use the gyroscope in the device to adjust the aim. It is the little things that make this device so cool.
Blurring the Lines
The feature that convinced me I needed a PS Vita? Augmented Reality. AR has been popping up here and there but not this developed. The PS Vita has a significant number of games in their launch titles geared to use the AR. The Vita is even being shipped with a set of the AR cards needed to play many of these titles. It looks like PlayStation is set to support AR. The Vita takes AR to the next level and more importantly brings it into the homes of everyday people.
AR lets players blur the lines between their games and their real world. Letting players set up soccer stadiums on their desks or host fighting tournaments in the park or where else they want. It is fun and it looks cool.
DOWNLOAD ALL THE THINGS!
The last reason the Vita is changing gaming is the way they are delivering content. Online game sales and DLC has been around for a while now. Steam, Xbox Live, and the SEN, formally PSN have been offering these features for years. With the Vita PlayStation is changing their stance on the issue. Up until now the SEN offered online games but never seemed to care to much if you picked up the physical copy or not.
An interesting thing happened when I went to the GameStop to pick up my Vita. The guy at the counter asked me if I would like any games with it. Logical question, I mean I just bought a new system of course I want some games to go with it. I always knew I wanted Uncharted: Golden Abyss, next to the AR that was other major selling feature for me, but a funny thing happened when he asked: I hesitated. For a moment, however brief, the idea of downloading the game instead passed through my head.
I snapped back to reality quickly. The $5 discount didn’t seem worth the lengthy download times and I didn’t want to spring for a big memory card just yet (or though it may be sooner than I thought). Still this was the first time I had ever had that thought. PlayStation pushing an online system, I don’t consider myself weak to the marketing propaganda of companies like PlayStation, but I dare say it might be working.
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| PS Vita Store |
Now PlayStation is releasing games online and discounting them to encourage sales. They are setting up an app store to support their new system, although it doesn’t have to much to offer right now, which means with the right nurturing they may be successful at moving to online only, or at least online mostly sales. With the right memory card a player can end the clutter in their living room and carry their game library on their Vita. No carrying bulky cartridge cases or having to leave some of your favourites behind.
They have obstacles of course, price is the main one:
- Price of both the cards and the content online.
- Another is the somewhat unreliability of the SEN on occasion. Large downloads take a while and connection issues abound.
- The third and last is the content itself. It is still early but, as I mentioned before, there is not a lot up there.
So there you have it. The PS Vita: A Game Changer. At least as far as I see it.
Excellent post- Informative, engaging and just a great topic. The augmented reality feature...v cool. Does it realy work like that? have you tried it - any alien autopsies?
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