New Vita model and COLORS!

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

New slim PS Vita model 2000 announced in Japan - Destructoid

To be frank, the color options are pretty bland. White, black, gray, pink, yellow and blue.

Its a bit thinner and lighter and replaces the OLED screen with an LCD HD screen. Dunno if that difference matters that much, but people are freaking out and saying OLED is better. The new screen allows for greater battery life of up to 6 hours so the trade off might be worth it.

1GB of on-board memory and supposedly there's a real price drop on the proprietary cards this time - we'll see when it converts to dollars and pounds, but I'm betting SD will still be cheaper by a long shot.

-Soul Sacrifice Delta was announced, its an expansion of this year's game with new content.
-Phantasy Star Nova was announced, it takes place in the PSO2 world, but is single-player/ad hoc only to show Sega has learned nothing about western gamers. It is made by Tri-Ace.
-SE teased the announcement of an announcement of a street date for FFX HD Collection and a Vita bundle for that. I'm totally being serious.
- PS4 launches in Japan February 22nd because of a desire to have a fair number exclusives lined up at launch. Well, and lts not like Xbox One is happening there anytime soon.

[Firewind]

Re: New Vita model and COLORS!

Nintendo's changes tend to be pretty drastic, look at the DS to DSi to DSI XL or GBA to GBA SP. Sony tend to make smaller improvements that cut manufacturing costs. it's basically Sony's answer to the 2DS: Cheaper, slightly worse screen and a bit of onboard memory.The onboard memory is a nice addition as it gives you an option to backup and transfer saves across memory cards if you are not a Playstation Plus Subscriber. Longer battery life...Eh the Vita never had any battery life issues anyway.

That said what gamers and people interested in the Vita want to see if the memory card prices coming down, that or a Vita model that supports SD cards. The vita makes me want to headdesk sometimes; it's a great little handheld that is getting its potential squandered by Sony not nutting up and being willing to accept they have to bring down the prices of the memory cards, or just saying screw it and releasing a Vita that supports SD cards.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: New Vita model and COLORS!

Eh the Vita never had any battery life issues anyway.

The Vita had slightly better battery life than the 3DS, but once you start multitasking and playing online its eaten up as quickly, if not faster. It really depends on what you're doing with it. Since Vita is my (substantard-yet-not-terrible) temporary substitute for a smartphone when I'm out in Wi-Fi areas, the battery can drop real fast once I start web browsing, facebooking, checking twitter, email, youtube and playing games.

Oddly its Facebook that is the total priss that demands I drop other applications to run it, not Youtube which would actually make sense. Then again, Facebook is the faster app on there.

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Also, if people thought 2DS was weird (which I don't really get, but okay), Sony announced PS Vita TV which is basically a Vita without a screen, touch controls and portability. Video apps work on it and so do movies from the PSN store, Netflix and Hulu.

Either its a coy answer to the Ouya or Sony just taking their obsession with handhelds being consoles one step further and just making a portable console that isn't a handheld.

2DS is now officially normal.

[Firewind]

Re: New Vita model and COLORS!

I think the Vita TV thing is supposed to be like the Super Game Boy adaptor but for the Vita. It's a bit odd given that nobody asked for this, but if it is cheaper than the Vita then it could be a nice little niche device for people that can't afford a Vita.

However, it has the same problems as the Super Game Boy and Game Boy Adaptor...Why not just buy a Game Boy or GBA? If you're playing portable games at home, the device is probably going to be plugged into a power outlet anyway and portable games always look like a pile of shite on a big screen anyway due to them not designed to be upscaled to that resolution. Even sprite based games suffer from it on modern TVs because of the difference resolution.

I guess I feel the same was as the 2DS about it. I can see why they made it and the people it would benefit, but unlike budget PCs, which are modular enough to upgrade when you can afford to (and cost roughly the same as a gaming rig over time), budget consoles are not going to save you money in the big picture, they often cost you more.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: New Vita model and COLORS!

PS Vita TV isn't really a Super Game Boy or GBA Player so much as a "me-too" Apple TV.

See, Super Game Boy and GBA Player didn't make their games lose any features in the jump from handheld - outside of Boktai and Kirby's Tilt and Tumble, anyway. Meanwhile, all touch-heavy PS Vita software would be a no-go on Vita TV. That considered, its an odd choice that VIta TV supports PS3 controllsrs, but not the touch-enabled PS4 controller instead because this could solve the issue for games that at least mostly focused on front-touch functions.

The other problem with Vita TV is unless the PS3 controller is a pack-in, you're looking at a $230+ price tag after the controller, a worthwhile memory card and one game (unless you have some PSN content waiting in the wings). By that point, as you said, you may as well have just gotten a proper PS Vita where you don't lose out on any features.

There are a ton of gullible console gamers that steadfastly believe playing their game on an HDTV is a superior experience to the "tiny" screen of the PS Vita. Its really all relative, but in their minds they're thinking back to the times of Game Boy or GBA where you had to leer at the things to see your game, which did cause some strain. They assume the same of 3DS and Vita, which are backlit so wonderfully you don't have to strain yourself to look at them.

I don't know how much resolution Vita Games would lose in the jump to a TV. I guess it depends on the TV.

Sony tends to be really obtuse in their reasoning and preach to the choir with their devices rather than look to expand to new consumers like other companies do.

With that in mind I would say this is for:

- Kids which, to be fair, don't care about how games look and just want to push buttons.
- Parents who don't want their kids touching their Playstations, but want them to have access to Remote Play and other content.
- PS4 enthusiasts will likely use it to play PS4 games anywhere in the home without moving the PS4 (cue Icemage's likely enthusiastic reason)
- People who are scared to be seen with a handheld but are gullible enough to believe PS4 Remote Play will work on free WiFi
- People that don't give a damn about the Vita and want some old PSP and PSOne games to play.
- People without a decent PC that want to play the Vita's indie stuff, though they could just spend the same amount on a cheap laptop.

I think Vita TV is really just something Sony's hoping they use to prop up the Vita in the short term. Its function as a movie player is nice, but not necessary. It could add some users in western markets, but I don't think its going to be doing the Vita that many favors because it splits the market with a lack of features and that's generally a bad thing.

Nintendo generally avoids doing that. 2DS doesn't split their market in terms of how games are played. It does run that risk with 3D support, but I doubt it was really that expensive to include the feature on the developer end anyway, so the 2DS is just a bargain for the consumers who don't care about 3D.

[Icemage]

Re: New Vita model and COLORS!

I don't really see VitaTV as being a particularly pertinent device at all. I "guess" you could use it like an AppleTV, and the price tag is in the right range, but its real market is for PS4 owners with multiple TVs. Instead of buying two consoles for each TV and worrying about transferring save data or physically moving the console, you can just drop a VitaTV on the second TV and remote play it over wi-fi.

Aside from that, I suppose there's probably "some" market out there that wants some combination of games + apps on their TV, but without a compelling software library that you can't get elsewhere... who is really going to care, particularly when most of the touch-enabled games won't work with VitaTV?


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: New Vita model and COLORS!

It seems there is a "fix" for the touchscreen issue. There is a pointer function for the Vita TV that can be mapped to L3 and R3, which you click and then just drag a pointer around on the screen.

And here's where you see the divide begin, because people playing something like Killzone Mercenary and doing the QTE hacking minigame are only going to be a liability, it would kill the flow of Guacamelee a bit and I can't imagine placing things in LBP Vita that way would be fun or fast. Seems like it would kill the pace of a lot of things where you can just touch and be done with something.

Plus you have to activate the feature and then deactivate it. Seems messy.

[Firewind]

Re: New Vita model and COLORS!

Trying to activate the SOS and answer help requests on Persona 4 Golden is going to be hilarious with that system.

[Icemage]

Re: New Vita model and COLORS!

Trying to activate the SOS and answer help requests on Persona 4 Golden is going to be hilarious with that system.

That would be a loss if the SOS/Answer Request system actually meant anything useful. It's "sort of" useful on the higher difficulties early on to get you some free healing, but the aggravation factor almost isn't worth it. The only real reason to play online for Persona 4 Golden is to get the Vox Populi effect telling you what other players did on that calendar day.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: New Vita model and COLORS!

I played P4G on Hard my first run - you get a lot of milage out of SOS. It falls out of vogue alongside Invigorate 3 when Personas and Rise start getting post-battle MP recovery stills. It also depends on if that Hard Mode was your first run and you really like grinding out dungeons the instant they're available so you can afford the most days possible to getting Social Links knocked out.

If you have a New Cycle game, SOS is again less useful because you've got the compendium from the prior run and your summoning restriction is removed. At that point you can use Yu to obliterate most of the early dungeons and access to Cool Breeze and Victory Cry.

Regardless, the software pointer is something that adds two steps to a process that only needed one. I mean, really, if you had to choose between doing a run of Guacamelee via PS3 Remote Play or the Vita version on Vita TV, there's no question which is going to play more smoothly. Chicken Morph comes up a lot.