Sony launches PlayStation Vita handheld to reclaim mobile gaming - Page 5

You get what you pay for.

The PSP is uncomfortable like you said. I bought a plastic grip that encases the PSP and makes it much more comfortable to hold. Perhaps the grip defeats the purpose of making it portable but it works.

I'm disappointed that Apple didn't upgrade the iPod Touch to include an A5 processor.

Maybe they needed every A5 for the more profitable iPad 2's and iPhone 4S's.

Of course, even with such a processor upgrade it still wouldn't come close to the PS Vita, but show a couple 'Infinity Blade II' action shots and who (outside of the fanatics) is gonna squawk?
I imagine an A5 iPod Touch (circa 2011, mind you), would have taken even more mind share (and profits) from the PS Vita, and Samsung Galaxy Players...

I just hope Apple gets it back together and synchronizes the same processor across all iOS devices released in the same calendar year -- or not bother to 'upgrade' the device (as was seen with the iPod Touch '4g', despite iOS 5).

Hopefully the new Samsung fab in Texas will help with supply of the 'latest and greatest' Apple processors, instead of filling in the processor supply for less profitable iOS devices, which currently seems to be the case.

Jesus Christ

Here you go again, putting "weird" among other words such as "pejorative" and "inferior"

I told Peabody to Google "WTF Japan Seriously?", but I guess both of you didn't even bother.

It's a popular meme around the internet to post the most bizarre things the Japanese produce with the subtitle "WTF Japan, Seriously?". It is NOT considered offensive.

The presence of annoyingly whiny people that make assumptions on things they don't know without even bothering on researching it is why I put the "Japanese weirdo" disclaimer by its side. I was actually expecting the rage to be about Catherine's suggestive cover, stupid comparisons to Rapelay and other nonsense. Kinda funny how it turned out.

It's a good thing that I didn't post an "Americans..." joke, otherwise you'd be jumping over me and imploring for a perma-ban

That's no excuse for being a jackass like he did.

You miss the point. Ship 4 weeks earlier and get a TON of Xmas sales. Ship a week after Xmas and demand is much lower due to consumer burnout. By the time consumers perk up around Valentines Day the new iPad revision will be a hot topic. Missed opportunity to be a sole motivator for sales.

So Sony may have the device in the ecosystem first, but the timing to chase BIG sales and average joe consumer PR is all wrong.

I have concluded that portable gaming will never be good enough for true AAA titles. Thus, games like Infinite Blade 2 that are tailored to the iPhone's touchscreen advantages and drawbacks and polished like hell are acceptable to me as the "AAAs for mobiles".

I'd rather play an immersive game like Uncharted 3 and Deus Ex on my PS3 or even on my Mac if Apple putted a REAL GPU on the 13" MBP.

Quite ironic how PC gamers diss out the Mac for poor GPU performance. Meanwhile, the iPhone 4S has by far the best GPU out of all the smartphones in the market. Even the "Hahaha-IT-BEATS-THE-IPHONE-4S-SUCK-IT-ISHEEP" Galaxy Nexus has a puny GPU that has half the performance of iPhone 4S's.

Agreed, the Wii wands show most of that.

Wii was thoroughly bashed as a platform before it shipped because of its woefully "underpowered specs" and unsuitable controllers. Boy were those pundits wrong. The Wii is directly responsible for PS Move and Kinnect being viable ideas as controllers. MS and Sony would have never touched the ideas if Nintendo hadn't shown them their ass first.

So the naysayers better be extremely careful about saying something that the console makers don't even believe anymore. Because we now know: "You, are the controller"

They will in February.

You have got to be kidding me.

The Wii only sold that many units because it was a gimmick. That platform has only 4 or 5 worthwhile titles, and they aren't what most people bought. Lack of processing power DOES MATTER. The original iPhone is as powerful as a Wii

Scratch that, because out of all those millions of Wii sales, almost NO ONE bought anything: They just settled for the crappy Wii Sports and called it a day. Even the "OMG-that's-so-legendary" Legend of Zelda titles weren't impressive to anyone that doesn't worship Nintendo.

The Move and Kinect are merely proof that Microsoft and Sony are decadent companies that are only after easy money. If Apple really wanted to, they could destroy their shares of the market just as easily as the iDevices destroyed Nintendo DS sales, and that was an accident!

This is a true gaming machine.

iPhone is a poser.

WTF you have a lot of weird anger issues. (See what I did there?)

C'mon! If you're going to troll you might as well put a little effort into it.

Indeed it's ironic that Apple has chosen to go all out on GPU where it doesn't matter, and be niggardly with it where it would.

But what is your point? Do you believe there are enough "true gamers" out there to "reclaim" any significant "mobile gaming" market?
No chance. They will continue to bleed market share to tablets and phones.

The dedicated mobile gaming device is now relegated to a niche market.

Yeah, it'll probably never get back to the times of the DS and PSP, as people can only spend their money once. And why would a parent buy their kid a PS Vita when they can just as easily buy them an iOS device and sync the games they already bought free.

A kid hardly cares about hardware controls. I assume the market for the Vita is 20-40 year old males, that have enough money to get an iPhone, iPad and a Vita and don't give a rats ass about how many devices they have to carry...

Personally, I want a Vita cause I think the games on it will be great. Had a chance to play with one and I loved the 5" screen + graphics of it (Uncharted).
Will mostly use it at home and maybe on long trips.

Have an iPhone, but hardly ever play games on it, just when I'm waiting on something, casual games, what it was meant for.

Cant wait for this to be released in the UK. I'll be one if the first in line.

There is an unboxing and gameplay demo here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDaLLjdsuFU

It is noted as being compatible with the downloadable PSP games so the following list of titles should be available to play from the outset:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...able_PSP_games

Those are more expensive than iOS apps but aren't too badly priced. I'd expect the Vita titles to cost more though. Going by the above video, they seem to come in retail boxes too so not download-only. The Vita has an SD-card type port.

The Vita looks like a solid gaming machine - effectively a portable PS3 - but who knows what size of market is left for that kind of device. I imagine the 7-12 year old range would be the biggest target as the 12-30 range would opt for the 360 or PS3 and it's certainly a decent alternative to an iPod Touch.

Some parents would look at it like buying an iPod Touch + a PS3 for $250, which is decent value. It has the advantage of having immersive games. If you give a kid an average iOS game (excluding e.g GTA 3, Tomb Raider Guardian), it will be completed in an hour tops and they need another game. Some PSP games can easily last 6-10 hours.

I don't like the UI but it's functional, there isn't much info about apps yet but at least it has a semi-usable browser:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV2AAUf-oIY

The PSP browser was unusable. The Vita browser isn't perfect though - no Youtube support it seems, nor decent HTML 5 support but I guess they can add this in software updates:

http://exophase.com/34618/ps-vita-do...ut-of-the-box/

Tactile feedback is fairly important IMO for a good gaming device. I don't like iOS for gaming particularly. I found the PSP worked better but lacked good titles worth buying. My preferred setup is the big console/PC + iOS for casual games.

1) Thanks for the link.

2) What's the guy on about at 1m:20s saying that '3G' is only used in Asia and '3S' is the standard in 70% of the other countries. I have never heard of such a designation and can't find any info to back up such a claim to that percentage.

3) 728,000 unit sales on first day in Japan. Pretty damn good.

4) Pet Peeve: That video is poorly recorded, edited and even the upload to YouTube lacks any attention to detail. He even left the title of the video PSVita.wmv. That whole thing is on par with people who record their TV to upload TV and music video clips.

Some interesting software sales stats from http://www.vgchartz.com/

Wii (Console sales: 92,300,000)
Total software sales: 736,060,000
Million sellers: 124
Game count: 1341
1st party game count: 84 (6.26%)
1st party sales: 368,460,000 (50%)
Attach rate: 7.97


X360 (Console sales: 61,500,000)
Total software sales: 566,310,000
Million sellers: 133
Game count: 997
1st party game count: 66 (6.62%)
1st party sales: 115,820,000 (21%)
Attach rate: 9.21


PS3 (Console sales: 58,200,000)
Total software sales: 480,370,000
Million sellers: 122
Game count: 846
1st party game count: 93 (11%)
1st party sales: 112,000,000 (23%)
Attach rate: 8.25




"The Wii was a gimmick"
That all depends on what you define as a "gimmick". In a sense most of the tech we buy is a "gimmick".



"Almost NO ONE bought anything"
That appears to be incorrect.

• Wii software sales are ahead of X360 and PS3.
• The Wii has had more "million seller" titles than PS3.
• The Wii has sold the least games per console, but not significantly so (0.28 behind the PS3 and 1.24 behind the X360).
• When we remove Wii Sports the Wii attach rate is still 7.12.

"Legend of Zelda titles weren't impressive to anyone that doesn't worship Nintendo."
I'm not sure if your intention here is to state the obvious (i.e. people who don't like Nintendo games were not impressed by Zelda titles) or to attempt to marginalise people who liked the Zelda series (i.e. "if you disagree with me you must be a Nintendo worshipper").

The A5 rumors I heard were saying Rogue/600 series SGX chips. I wonder what will be faster, the quad core SGX543mp4 or the dual core variant of the 600 series. They promised some huge performance gains, but we'll see if that translates to real world.

Please. Spare us the anti-American B.S. You know very well what the point was. No one needs to know how clever you are.

Yeah, admitting that there are other countries, with other values, is totally anti-American.

I guess when people in other countries line up to buy something those sales don't count either, yeah?

For a post trying to be so cosmopolitan you don't seem to have ever lived there. You are not particularly correct except on the thanksgiving part. That day is meaningless to them. Shinjuku and Harajuku during Christmas season sure convinced me you are off base about the commercial aspect of the holiday. Sure it's not a Christian-centric holiday there, but it is commercially viable and non-trivial.

Wait, so they celebrate Christmas, just not in a Christian way...

...because they don't celebrate christmas? O.o

If they have a winter holiday that involves buying crap then that is not at all the same as observing christmas.

I'm an atheist, and occasionally I buy things in the month of december. I don't, however, call it "celebrating christmas."

1.) I'm able to have a 3DS, a PSP, a phone, and an iPad on me when traveling, I don't see what someone's obsession of one device is warranted.

2.) The iPad has pretty much taken over video playback and web browsing from my psp and phone respectively. I still use an iPod for music play... simply because its more convenient for me.

3.) The PSP Vita (and PSP) allow me to do something that you can't with anything else: play a psOne classic and sync between the PS3 and the PSP. And from what I hear this feature is going to be extended to PSP Vita games and PS3 titles.

4.) You are correct the gaming industry's next big thing will be iOS games, specifically the "distract me now" variety. The market is high volume/low profit which means the games need to be churned out cheaply and quickly. I do think eventually what will happen is similar to the board game industry, you'll have some standard titles everyone downloads onto their phone and some variants... but actual development will become almost non existent save a few companies satisfying a niche market. High budget titles will become much more infrequent, and console systems will become extinct by the next generation, as will PC gaming (for the most part). There are more casual mobile phones on market then the total ps3/xbox360 base. This already happened for the most part in Japan, its why all their newer games outside of Nintendo have that moe look, the only audience of adult gamers left are hikikimori and otaku. This is also why Nintendo said Apple was the death of the game industry... mobile gaming already killed it in Japan.

5.) Hardcore gaming is about time investment, not specifically the difficulty or titles you play. Myst for example is a hard game to play, but appeals to the casual market because there is no investment to play (beyond solving hard puzzles). While Dragon Quest is easy to think about but requires you to spend hours repeating battles over and over to gain levels so you can progress through the game.

6. So why are you so happy? Thousands if not millions of college educated professionals are going to lose their jobs, and never get a new one (since app building doesn't need nearly as many programmers). An industry that may have been taken seriously like the movie industry from the academic and critic communities will instead be reduced to toys. And all those xbox and ps3 owners that enjoy big budget AAA titles will have to deal with becoming a niche market... more niche then mac owners were in the 90s. And with the economy the way it is... it might just collapse like it did in 1983. But hey you can in one device play Angry Birds and shoot an email telling Will Wright to get a job.

http://us.playstation.com/psvita/games-and-media/

As much as I'm very enthusiastic about Vita, I'm kinda worried about the list of the games

I'm still mourning the death of the novel. Capitalism is a race to the bottom, in regard to refinement at least, and even in some senses specialization. You could get in a huge argument about what role the specialist plays in all of it (and there is a place for him,) but film, literature, games... when they are merely a source of income they appeal to the widest swathe of buyers first and foremost, meaning accessibility, meaning shallow and despicable; meaning Angry Birds instead of Halo, Vonnegut instead of Joyce, Michael Bay instead of Visconti.

But only the sales numbers matter! Forget everything else, who sold the most steaming crap is all anyone here wants to know.

Thank you for your considerable insight,
I'm sure we are all more enlightened as a result.

I grew up as a console and handheld gamer (Atari 2600, NES, Gameboy, Genesis, Sega CD, SNES, Gameboy Color, Sega Saturn, PS1, PS2, Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Advance SP, NDS, Game Cube, Wii, PS3, XBox 360)

In late high school and in college, I got into PC gaming, first with FPS then MMORPGs.

But as I live life as a post-collegiate, my iPhone and iPad satisfy my gaming needs for the most part. I never have time for consoles at all. It seems like the only time I have for gaming are little moments like waiting in a waiting room, sitting in a line, or when I'm riding shotgun in the car.

I haven't even touched my NDS or GB systems in a long while. I still pack them, on trips, but my iPhone and iPad get way more love.

Oh yeah, when I stopped console/PC gaming, I replaced all that time with running and lifting weights. I am in much better shape than I was in my couch/desk-rotting gaming years.

Go outside and play Life.

The implication that gaming and being fit/active are mutually exclusive is BS. Games are active intellectual entertainment whereas exercise is active physical entertainment. Statistically speaking, the time spent in either comes mainly out of watching TV. That is a good thing no matter what metrics are used. I recall research in my home country indicates gamers actually have more hobbies (outside gaming) and are more fit than non-gamers.

You can also play games like Infinity Blade 2, Real Racing, Nova and lots of big name titles from big name publishers.

These games are huge, well over a gigabyte in some cases requiring thousands of hours to program.

Your doom and gloom scenario is not as glum as you try to make out.

AirPlay with an Apple TV on a big screen using iPod Touch's, iPhone's and iPads as the controllers is the future.

Don't underestimate just how powerful these interlinked devices can be, ARM based chips are undergoing explosive development and iOS is right there ready to take full advantage of whatever comes along with multithreading of processes built in, ready to advantage of whatever developers want to throw at it.

The future equivalent of crappy Flash games, only the price of admission will go way up from the current $0.
And none of that matters at all because the control isn't there and the quality-conscious audience isn't there.

I think you're posting too much. Just an observation.

I love it when two people who've lived/been to the same country disagree with each other about that country.

Texas Instrument's initial OMAP 5 platform will include two Cortex-A15

The OMAP 5 processor leverages two ARM® Cortex™-A15 MPCores™ – the most advanced ARM architecture to date – capable of speeds of up to 2 GHz per core in the OMAP 5 implementation. With a 50 percent boost in performance over the Cortex-A9 core (at the same clock frequency), combined with up to 8GB of dynamic memory access and hardware virtualization support, the Cortex-A15 core can enable true mobile computing experiences, such as the ones referenced above.

I originally saw a Texas Instrument video claiming that the dual-core Cortex-A15 would be faster and use less power than a quad-core Cortex-A9.
Of course, the continued reduction in the manufacturing 'process' helps -- 28 nanometers.

Here is more information, though Apple will have their own implementation for the A6 --
http://newscenter.ti.com/Blogs/newsr...le-615064.aspx

Well if having Santa Claus figures up enough to consider common (but not ubiquitous like the US), putting up and decorating Charlie Brown trees in the Tatami Room and buying stuff for gifts in the fine commercial spirit most of the western world does, then Yes. They are celebrating the commercial tradition of Christmas. And it goes farther than just Shinjuku and Harajuku, you can see it all over in metropolitan areas, not just the Kanto plain.

Most Christmas tradition components are just a co-opted miss-mash of previously pagan religion traditions the Pope used to solidify religious conversion of the northern European tribes. Why should you be the least bit surprised that the ones of those that essentially have secular meanings today are co-opted by commercial marketing forces in Japan? Nothing wrong with any of that, it's just how thing play out.

Blame MTV and now the internet.

There can be a very big difference between visiting and living in a place when it comes to seeing how the residents live. Not just how a couple tourist destinations appear.

Fair enough. I guess you can't escape christmas anywhere.

The best mobile gaming device is the one you have with you. I'm not going to lug this thing around in addition to my phone.

But when I plan on "gaming", I'm going to play it on my 50" TV or 27" monitor when I'm in the comfort of my own home.