The Vita was a fantastic device hampered by the dumbest memory costs I can think of. It was super expensive to buy storage for a device that relied on you downloading stuff. I really think if the storage was cheaper it would have done better. The Switch has shown you can have expensive games, but the storage for it is dirt cheap.
That was back when Sony (and many other companies) felt everything should be proprietary.
I forget the prices, but I know it was high enough that I would only get the smallest card I could deal with. And I certainly feel like it made me not want to deal with buying crap on it. That and the store never worked right on my device. It always timed out. Meh…
The homebrew scene has come up with a device that allows you to use a micro SD card these days. If only that was the default!
The Vita was weird. Excellent hardware with some very dumb restrictions. Like how they restricted which PS1 games you could play on the system, even if you could buy them on the PS3 - and some would work, but only if you transferred them from PS3. And the Vita TV being functionally the same but with a whitelist that only allowed it to run certain games (yes, some games needed Vita specific features but not many). Plus, the almost complete lack of support for it in the west.
Ya it had some pretty awesome JRPGs and Visual Novels. The West gave up on it after like a year.
But where are you playing that you have high-speed WiFi but not access to an electric outlet?
His bed probably. That’s where most people on Qt3 claim to play their handhelds, I’ve noticed.
The Vita would have done much better if Sony themselves hadn’t abandoned it after a couple of years.
The storage format and the lack of any onboard storage in the otherwise-superior (OLED handheld in 2011!) launch version didn’t do it any favors either, though.
Yep. Some of Sony’s choices regarding the Vita were baffling.
What might have saved the Vita post-release could have been as simple as massively discounting those memory cards. Or selling some low-cost official adapter to make it compatible with standard memory cards. This might have sold more Vitas and kept Sony’s attention on it a bit longer.
My favorite handheld based solely on game library is probably the 3DS (due to DS BC), but as far as design, it’s probably the Vita. The piano-black shell, the size, the round contours, such a beautiful console.
The Switch has easily been my favorite. The Vita is really small for someone with gigantic mitts like I have. The Switch with the big oled screen and the split pad pro it’s really awesome. I was playing Persona 4 Golden a week or so ago and it just explodes off the screen with the colors. It’s nutty…
It really makes me regret not going OLED with my last TV purchase. I didn’t realize how much better colors look and I was focused on stupid peak brightness.
We have a name and a price now…
WTF is Sony thinking?
Let’s see.
"Games that must be streamed on PS5 using a PS Plus Premium membership are not compatible,” says Sony.
Ok, so that is bad, especially with their upcoming cloud PS5 games service coming online.
The PlayStation Portal doesn’t have Bluetooth, so you won’t be able to connect to wireless headphones or Sony’s Pulse 3D headset. Instead, it uses a PlayStation Link wireless technology — a new proprietary standard for PlayStation devices.
Confusedface.gif Ah, they had to get their B.S. sony-exclusive peripheral stuff in it. No memory cards, but also you have to buy THEIR wireless headphones to use it.
Thankfully, the PlayStation Portal also has a 3.5mm headphone jack for wired audio.
At least they didn’t have the “courage” to remove the 3.5mm jack, so earbuds will work.
$199.99 for a device that doesn’t have bluetooth, and does something my android tablet already can? Tough sell. At least it is 299.99$?
Yeah others said as much in the other thread but I just don’t have a use case for this. I would personally get about $50 of value out of it, a very scientific number I just made up.
I understand why it’s $200—a Dual Sense alone is closer to $100 than I’d like. But that doesn’t mean this product makes much sense.
Yeah, I’m not seeing a use case for this. I guess it makes sense for someone who is all-in on Playstation and wants to have a portable option somewhere that they have good Internet access. But that’s a huge caveat – I’d definitely trade away graphical fidelity to be able to run games in places without fast connections.
I mean, it not having Bluetooth, but some proprietary Sony wireless standard is a fucking joke.
I think the market research probably shows that the vast majority of people using portables like the Switch and Steamdeck don’t actually use them outside the home. Smartphones have completely replaced the “on the go” entertainment function for just about everybody, but playing while something else is on TV, or in different rooms still make the form factor appealing. That’s why designs have trended completely away from pocketability, or all day battery life. It’s actually kinda funny seeing people react negatively to the PlayStation Portals “short” 3-4 hour battery life as if that wasn’t about the same as a Switch, and twice what you get from a Steamdeck.
I thought I’ve read where this device gets about as much life as a DualSense controller does. That’s more like 7-9 hours…
But that’s because they sold a billion switches, and you need to buy a switch if you want to play Nintendo games. That is, there’s no “non portable” switch.
For this thing from Sony, not only do you have the option of a PS5 if you want to play these games… You literally have to already own one.
I think that portability is a much more important for the target market of this thing from Sony.
You can already do that with an old PS4, right? Which tons of people with a PS5 have.
Maybe your right and there’s a big market for this thing… I don’t think there is. We can come back here and compare notes in a year or so.
Could be, I suppose. Though even if we grant that most portable usage is at home, a significant chunk of that has to be networked multiplayer games where everybody has their own systems. My kids and their cousins do that all the time on Switch, but it would be impossible on this unless you also have multiple PS5s.
And even if 95% of actual day-to-day usage of portables happens in the home, it seems like a hard sell to give up even the option of bringing one on an airplane or long car trip or something, unless you already have something else for that use case.
And I agree that battery life isn’t a huge deal in general, and that devices are generally making reasonable tradeoffs between battery, processing power, and weight. If you want all-day usage, it’s not that hard to bring a power bank, or to find a plug somewhere. But that said, I actually hadn’t noticed that this was only 3-4 hours. That seems surprisingly low for something that (unlike switch or steam deck) doesn’t have to spend any power processing the graphics itself. But it’s not really a big issue because if you’re at home or somewhere with good data speeds, you can probably plug it in fairly easily.
That’s the thing: you do. Your phone.
In any case, it doesn’t have to appeal to 100% of the user-base to be successful. It’s just an accessory.