People really have smartphones on the brain, it seems.
It didn't dawn on me until the other day, listening to my co-workers jabber on about their various smartphone games that some people just really, really like those styles of games. I can't fault them for it, any more than I can fault my love for an Uncharted or a God of War.
I work at Capcom/Beeline Interactive. We make the Smurf's Village game, among others, but Smurf's is our bread and butter. I deal with Android and iOS devices every day at work.
I've owned my smartphone for almost a year now, and when I first got it, I was all over downloading apps like crazy. Playing all sorts of free and cheap games, but after a few weeks, it wore off, and none of those games were doing it for me. Cute distractions isn't what appeals to me as a gamer. Yes, I have Angry Birds on my phone. I've played it a total of about 30 minutes. It's certainly fun, but sometimes a guy just wants something with a little more, er, meat on it's bones.
The Vita is scratching an itch I've had since I first saw the original Game Boy when it released and I was 10 years old. For 22 years I've been dying for a portable device that truly captured what it was like playing the big boxes I had hooked up to my TV. There was always some kind of limitation to what a portable device could do. Whether it was horsepower or input options.
The Vita doesn't need an "Android" OS hook, or a bunch of apps. It's hook is that it has a 5" OLED screen. It has a touchscreen and rear touch pad. It has dual analog sticks. And the biggest hook of all: It plays games that look only marginally different from their console counterparts. No genre or style of game is out of reach for the Vita.
We put up with a lot from the PSP and DS because of their limitations. They couldn't do certain genres very well. The PSP's lack of a second analog stick made 3rd person shooters a chore to play. The lack of a touch screen hindered the type of games possible on the system. The DS had the touchscreen, but lacked the horsepower to create some truly ambitious games.
The Vita doesn't have those hindrances. If you want big, console style games, you got them. If you want smaller, "app-friendly" fair, you got it. You want a shooter that doesn't have you wrestling with the CLAW or other shoehorned control schemes, you got it.
Not everybody wants the same thing, so thank GOD for options. The Vita isn't trying to woo that person obsessed with Smart Phones or Tablets. The Vita is clearly aimed towards a gamer that wants a true gaming handheld. Apps like Netflix, Twitter, Facebook are the bonus, whereas, on Smart phones and tablets, it's the reverse; social apps are the main draw, and the games are the bonus.
I don't plan on using my phone for gaming anymore, because it just didn't click with me (no buttons, no real sense of feedback while playing; disposable titles with very few gems; most games cut from the same cloth, etc). I'm dying to get my hands on a Vita, because I want to play some games on a machine that was built for that purpose from the ground up. If I want to send my friends some messages on Twitter, there about a million other ways to do that. When I fire up my Vita, believe you me, it's because I want to get some serious gaming in. Finding out what internet drama my friends and family are up to isn't what my gaming handheld is for.
