Andrew House: PS Vita a 'legacy platform' outside of Japan and Asia

I've been waiting to pick a Vita up for cheap because I bought Ys Memories of Celceta back when it launched

I got a great amount of use of the PSP with its limited library and I expect to eventually do the same with the Vita
 
It's basically a PS1/PSP machine for me anyway

It's a shame that many of the PS2 ports run so poorly on it though.

Or that it never got much first party support.

It had tons of potential and barely lived up to any of it.
 
I hope this doesn't mean localization teams will stop bringing Vita games over from Japan, since Japan is still going fairly strong on the software front.
 
I love off tv play on Wii u. Anyone tell me if the vita would be worth getting just for that feature or is the controller setup on the vita not great when used for ps4 games.

Are you buying the Vita for that feature alone? If so I would say wait a bit for a price drop.

Honestly, off screen play is phenomenal in my experience. Sure, any game greater than 30fps on PS4 will feel slower as the Vita forces a 30fps Remote Play experience (well, there was a new firmware that allows you to set 60fps but its probably bandwidth intensive), but its still fantastic. You have to make due with using the front screen and back touchpad a bunch to offset the lack of PS4 touchpad, L2, R2, L3, and R3 but its still fantastic. Best example of controller mapping for Vita remote play is Destiny. Further, depending on connection speed, you dont even need to be at home to remote play. I was on a business trip on my Vita using hotel WiFi thousands of miles away from home and was able to remote play Destiny (I wouldnt do a strike with it but could handle patrols decently enough).

Again, if you are looking for strictly remote play, I think the device is great there BUT not worth the asking price if that is all you want with it. Now, if you are interested in playing a lot of the indie games that released on PS3 and PS4 on the go, plus a lot of stellar Vita titles (granted a lot of them are JRPGs, VNs, etc), then I would say you could go out and now and get it and it would be worth it (memory cards are really expensive however). Honestly though, wait until after E3 to purchase it...while Andrew House is saying its dead, if it gets a price drop it will probably be announced at E3 or around then.

Weird, the Vita never had any presence at previous E3's.

Have fun with your scarce year.

Was it the year of the Vita launch or the year after that rather than devote any time to the Vita, Sony spent what felt like forever with the terrible stage show of Wonderbook? Talk about killing any momentum for the Vita, let alone Sony at E3 that year. And since then, any Vita talk is usually some quick sizzle reel or "X game is coming to PS3 (or PS4) and Vita." For the last few years I think Vita fans would have settled for a Nintendo style Vita Direct to cover Vita games. However, that is too much to ask a company that believes that gamers will find Vita games without telling the owners about them OR hell, even remembering that certain titles launched on the system during Store Updated on the Blog, specifically a game they published (looking at you Oreshika).
 
What's keeping Sony from letting people download and play all PSP and PSOne games on the Vita? There's still PSP games you can't download or transfer to on the Vita, which bugs me.

I really hope to see full support in the future.
 
I hope this doesn't mean localization teams will stop bringing Vita games over from Japan, since Japan is still going fairly strong on the software front.

If anything there's been a noticeable ramp up in localizations lately. We're getting stuff I'd never have dreamed of a few years ago. I think the Vita's niche audience is enough to support these games.
 
Not me. Over 100 Vita games here. 63 that fit on my memory card not counting PSP/PS1/PSM. Only 1 Japanese game on thee, and I don't even like it(P4G). It's all about tbe indies for me. And the first party and western third party stuff that came out in the first couple years.

I feel like that's a tremendous part of the issue though. I like some indies, but how sad is it that Sony can't find it in themselves to advertise the fantastic Japanese games on it as system-sellers and instead resorts to calling it a legacy platform, PS4 accessory, etc. Frankly, why would I care for Indies when they're nearly all available on every other console and Steam sales are so fierce? The only time I ever grab indies is when they're on sale under $5, and even then I don't find them very interesting.

I mean, I'm glad you and others like your Vita and everyone's tastes are different, but a library like that is the best-case testament to Sony failing to properly market the Vita. (The worst case simply being no games)

Man, I used to like Sony. They feel like such a greedy company now- the Vita is literally the second coming of the Saturn. Big men in suits saying it's not relevant, thus making it so. Sony in general is just a really, really stupid company in my eyes.
 
I'm hoping the PSTV gets hacked so I can play all my PSP and Vita titles that would work fine if it weren't for the "whitelist" they have implemented. I really want to play Castlevania: Drac X Chronicles on it.

Personally, I'd sell my Vita if the PSTV played the same games. I'd have no need for it.

Really hope this happens at this point. I don't have any faith in SCE to keep servers up for everything I've bought for this thing.
 
Their support has been pretty fucking dreadful on Vita, if we're totally honest. Nothing of substance, sans Gravity Rush, really came from them. So many middle of the road filler titles to console IPs and ports was what their bread and butter attempts were.

In fact, it was the exact same problem they gave with the PSP; it was marketed outside of Japan as getting console-like experiences in the palm of your hand. And the market spoke then that this wasn't desired. Why in the fuck did they try it again? Does anyone remember the awful marketing for Unit 13? The first dual-stick handheld shooter? Who cares?!

To be fair the stuff they put out for it was pretty good when they bothered. But as soon as things aren't going their way they just cut and run. That's bullsh*t. Also PSP was pretty successful...
 
I'm" going to continue to enjoy the platform regardless of what anyone at Sony or otherwise says. It didn't realize it's full potential, but it is and will continue to be a great platform for my tastes.
 
I'm" going to continue to enjoy the platform regardless of what anyone at Sony or otherwise says. It didn't realize it's full potential, but it is and will continue to be a great platform for my tastes.

I still have a bunch of games that I haven't played on it and I don't really use a portable that often so I'm all set. Doesn't mean I'm not bitter though...
 
Sonys at fault for not marketing correctly in the first place but you can't blame them for abandoning it. They tried to save it and made games for it, no one bought them. Tearaway's sales still sting.
 
I completely disagree with anyone who contends Sony didn't properly support the Vita. They tried. The market simply wasn't there anymore.

Smartphones and tablets killed the Vita, not Sony.
 
Pretty much all notable output in the latter half of the PSP lifetime was Japanese-developed 3rd party games. And all that's coming out right now are Japanese-developed 3rd party games. As far as I'm concerned nothing has changed. System is a great successor to the PSP.
 
Are you buying the Vita for that feature alone? If so I would say wait a bit for a price drop.

Honestly, off screen play is phenomenal in my experience. Sure, any game greater than 30fps on PS4 will feel slower as the Vita forces a 30fps Remote Play experience (well, there was a new firmware that allows you to set 60fps but its probably bandwidth intensive), but its still fantastic. You have to make due with using the front screen and back touchpad a bunch to offset the lack of PS4 touchpad, L2, R2, L3, and R3 but its still fantastic. Best example of controller mapping for Vita remote play is Destiny. Further, depending on connection speed, you dont even need to be at home to remote play. I was on a business trip on my Vita using hotel WiFi thousands of miles away from home and was able to remote play Destiny (I wouldnt do a strike with it but could handle patrols decently enough).

Again, if you are looking for strictly remote play, I think the device is great there BUT not worth the asking price if that is all you want with it. Now, if you are interested in playing a lot of the indie games that released on PS3 and PS4 on the go, plus a lot of stellar Vita titles (granted a lot of them are JRPGs, VNs, etc), then I would say you could go out and now and get it and it would be worth it (memory cards are really expensive however). Honestly though, wait until after E3 to purchase it...while Andrew House is saying its dead, if it gets a price drop it will probably be announced at E3 or around then.

Thanks that's exactly what I needed to know. Pretty much want it for off tv play. Better for family lounging around the living room without someone hogging the tv screen. Of course I'll dip into the vita library a bit but want it mainly for the ps4 experience. The Wii U gamepad has been a big hit at the house.
 
Not surprised at all. It was pretty much dead in Sony's eyes for a long time now. Oh well, bring on the Japanese/indie games support.
 
A legacy platform is a line of hardware that's still supported but no longer see active development.

What does it mean for the vita hardware? Possibly no more hardware revision. Or maybe just something minor to deal with component obsolescence. Still, being legacy in one part of the world and not another might not mean anything at all.

What does it mean for vita software? Probably nothing. Remote play is still supported. There's still new firmware coming out and Japanese games.

I'm not sad about western games. I didn't even play those. There's just in the pile. It's too bad that there was not more first party support on Japan.

MLB The show 2015 was $20.
 
I got more than enough use out of my Vita to justify the purchase. I love the little guy. The world may not understand, but we Vita owners will always understand one another.

And it's still not dead yet! There's a few games still that are coming up for it that I want to play.
 
Sad to hear but not surprising at all.

It changes nothing for me. Japanese support, indies and its huge PSP and PSone catalog were always the main reason for me to have mine. As long as we keep getting those I'm good. My favorite handheld (and console in general) of all time.

And that OLED that makes games look glorious of course.
 
Fuck you Sony. It's your own damn fault that the Vita did so poorly outside of Japan, and now you're giving the people in the west that did buy a Vita the finger.
 
What I think this means is no more US first party deved games. I suspect the devs will just shift to ps4 development. I don't know if sony will ever make another portable after this.
 
To stay in the metaphor, isn't it more like his/her parents won't allow it?

Not for me because I'm already hitched by buying two of these things, memory cards, and games, but Sony not trying to show a brotha love no matter what ever since the PS4 came along.

She may make you think that you matter and believe that you are in a stable relationship with the occasional update, but the love been gone. It's all about stacking that paper and taking care of exploits now.

It didn't have to end like this. :-(
 
Didn't buy a PSP and didn't buy a Vita. By time I got around to thinking about getting them, they had stalled out. Hopefully Sony will give up the portable space. Nintendo has a force choke on it. No need to waste the money and resources trying to topple them.
 
I completely disagree with anyone who contends Sony didn't properly support the Vita. They tried. The market simply wasn't there anymore.

Smartphones and tablets killed the Vita, not Sony.

Yep.

The Vita 1st party launch lineup was amazing. But no one bought the thing, so they cut their losses and turned into an indie/remote play machine.

Not a bad pivot honestly.

Fuck you Sony. It's your own damn fault that the Vita did so poorly outside of Japan, and now you're giving the people in the west that did buy a Vita the finger.

Nah. Sony did the best they could. The Vita is a Gen 7 device.
 
Sony's treated the the Vita as a legacy platform for a while now. I wish I didn't buy one at launch after seeing how they bungled it, the whole memory card mess was a red flag I should've paid attention to.

"In the past we launched PSP and then shifted our attention to PS3 when that came on the horizon, which we now concede was a mistake" -Shuhei Yoshida

And then they did it again and even worse than what they did with the PSP! When it comes to the Vita, fuck Sony.
 
Top Bottom