Playstation Vita

[supert3d]

Sony haven't region locked a console since 1999. Chill out.

3DS for games (certainly downloadable titles) is locked down, so is the DSi.

(Obv. Not sony, but you know...)

[supert3d]

There's physical games, too. And nothing to stop you registering a US account over here.

Here's a stupid question - it has a UMD drive?

[Spacehost]

3DS for games (certainly downloadable titles) is locked down, so is the DSi.

(Obv. Not sony, but you know...)

Nintendo boo. I think the PSP and PS3 showed publishers region locking doesn't affect sales particularly.

Anyway, you're never going to have a PS Store without region locking, publishers like to set prices on a per region basis. If that's an issue set up a US account and buy USD network codes off the web.

Here's a stupid question - it has a UMD drive?

It uses flash cards instead. Best start offloading those UMD games now.

[Jolly]

The PSP may be the most neglected of my machines and they may have told a bunch of hackers my mother's maiden name, but bugger me if Sony haven't totally convinced me to Day 1 a Vita.

Really rather excited about this now!

[Spacehost]

Also, I love all the touch and tilt inputs the Vita has. I'm working on an iPad game this summer and I could easily see it working on Vita too without changing the controls.

Sneaky, Sony- if you can get people porting their iPad and iPhone titles you'll get a lot of casual games very quickly. I think the Vita and iPad even share the same GPU and CPU.

[Oh Danny Boy]

This is the best of both worlds.

Standard dual sticks and touch screens. What's the problem - from the videos everyone has made it clear that the touch controls on traditional games are optional.

if they are optional then what is the point? navigate menus either by finger or d-pad? seems extremely pointless. If its not going to bring anything new to the menu its inclusion seems nothing more than a poor attempt to follow the current trend

Not used an iphone much, have we?

owned one before and it is the worst platform for gaming i have ever experienced and i've previously owned an ngage

[bradigor]

If Sony can get an app store half as successful as Apples, then they will rake in the money.

[bradigor]

if they are optional then what is the point? navigate menus either by finger or d-pad? seems extremely pointless. If its not going to bring anything new to the menu its inclusion seems nothing more than a poor attempt to follow the current trend

I would rather build tracks in Modnation by using the touch screen, than a convoluted menu system that sees me... Press x, move d-pad, press x, bring up menu, choose new bit of track, press x, bring up menu, choose new bit of track, press x, move, press x, move, press x...etc

[phresh]

If Sony can get an app store half as successful as Apples, then they will rake in the money.

I didn't think Apples app store was actually financially very successful as far as Apple are concerned?

[Spacehost]

if they are optional then what is the point? navigate menus either by finger or d-pad? seems extremely pointless. If its not going to bring anything new to the menu its inclusion seems nothing more than a poor attempt to follow the blah blah blah

Touch screens are the best thing to happen to user interface design since the mouse. I bet you're one of those luddites who don't even own a touchscreen phone, clicking up and down through your menus like it's 1999.

[Garwoofoo]

I would rather build tracks in Modnation by using the touch screen, than a convoluted menu system that sees me... Press x, move d-pad, press x, bring up menu, choose new bit of track, press x, bring up menu, choose new bit of track, press x, move, press x, move, press x...etc

As opposed to... stab at tiny screen with fat finger, stab at tiny screen with fat finger, do it again because you hit the wrong spot with your fat finger, wipe greasy finger across shiny screen, spend five minutes obsessively cleaning screen with cloth... etc

Give me the d-pad any day. Touch screens are good for toddlers but poor interfaces for anything but the simplest of games.

[supert3d]

I didn't think Apples app store was actually financially very successful as far as Apple are concerned?

I happened to have this open in my RSS reader when i read your post. Apple take a 30% cut of apps so you could work it out from the figures below. Ha, sorry my brain won't get in gear today or i'd do the maths now:

• There are now over 425,000 apps in the App Store — 90,000 of them are built for the iPad
  
• 14 billion apps have been downloaded in less than 3 years. (Yes, that will very soon surpass total song downloads.)
  
• Apple has paid out $2.5 billion to third-party app developers — that’s up $1.5 billion from a year ago.
  
• There are 225 million iTunes accounts (with credit cards attached and ready to spend)
  

[Spacehost]

In fact, let's go through the things that you can with a touchscreen Vita compared to the PSP:

Enter text without pressing left down down down down X left left left X right right X etc

Select menu items without pressing left left left X right right right Triangle.

Surf the web without slloooooowwwwlllllyy mooooooovvvviiiinnnggg thaaaaaaaa poiiiiiinteeeerrrrr wiiiiiitghhhh ttttthhhhheeee ssssttttiiiiiiiccccckkkk.

[fragglerock]

I'm curious whether they'll make anything where having the 3G model will feel like a genuine benefit. I can't see me plumping for it at the moment. Wi-Fi will do me in almost every environment where I actually game for any serious duration.

If it is Kindle like 'free' 3G then it may be worth it, else my phones wifi hotspot functionality will be fine, and no further subscription.

[Dimahoo]

Not only that, but certain games do lend themselves to be better to play with a touchscreen, just the same as some games are better played with twinsticks, that matrix thing at the back or tilt or a Dpad.

5 CONTROL SYSTEMS in a HD portable with 2 cameras at £250 or whatever it'll be around that mark.

It doesn't matter if your the handless organist, theres a control system for you.

"i can't wait to play and at a price with fewer digits then me, it truely is a miracle of Kaz!"

[Spacehost]

As opposed to... stab at tiny screen with fat finger, stab at tiny screen with fat finger, do it again because you hit the wrong spot with your fat finger, wipe greasy finger across shiny screen, spend five minutes obsessively cleaning screen with cloth... etc

Give me the d-pad any day. Touch screens are good for toddlers but poor interfaces for anything but the simplest of games.

You own a Simbian phone and I claim my £5. Try an Android phone or iPhone for long enough and you wind up poking your PSP screen wondering why there's all these bloody great icons everywhere but you have to punt a cursor about the screen to select things.

[bradigor]

As opposed to... stab at tiny screen with fat finger, stab at tiny screen with fat finger, do it again because you hit the wrong spot with your fat finger, wipe greasy finger across shiny screen, spend five minutes obsessively cleaning screen with cloth... etc

Give me the d-pad any day. Touch screens are good for toddlers but poor interfaces for anything but the simplest of games.

Place finger on screen....draw shape of track in one smooth motion.

Select scenery, paint with your finger where you want to put it

Select height and banking options and press on areas you wish to change

Much easier and quicker.

[Spacehost]

If it is Kindle like 'free' G3 then it may be worth it, else my phones wifi hotspot functionality will be fine, and no further subscription.

I'm sure I heard that's how it works- free data access for the web browser and basic social stuff, possibly even small downloads.

[supert3d]

If it is free 3G data for the price difference it would be nuts not to pay a bit more for it.

[Garwoofoo]

You own a Simbian phone and I claim my £5.

Ha, you're absolutely right and it's a hateful device.

That said, I did buy an iPad recently but the game I've played on it most is "Clean The Screen". In fact I haven't yet found anything on it worth playing that isn't throwaway shit, whereas I use my PSP daily. I'm really looking forward to the Vita, but the less I have to prod it with my greasy fingers, the happier I will be.

[Spacehost]

If it is free 3G data for the price difference it would be nuts not to pay a bit more for it.

Really depends on if they put a tight useage limit on it. Lock out the Store, don't let you play online, only give you a few hundred MB of data, etc. Like I say I can just use the WiFi tether on my phone and get up to HSDPA speeds, but it would be nice if it was a useful 3G capability.

[NecroMorrius]

very few game types work better with a touch screen then conventional controls. The iphone and DS has shown that. Touch screen is a gimmick i wish will die a horrible death.

What?

Think of all the things that you do on a touchscreen phone on a daily basis, game or otherwise. Would you want to do all these things with a D-Pad? Of course you wouldn't. And the acts of selecting, dragging, resizing, pinching, zooming, flicking, tapping etc etc are just as likely to appear in games as they are in contact lists and email apps.

Touch is not great for emulating traditional controls via onscreen D-Pads and the like, but it's perfect for a massive number of experiences, anything built around using touch instead of traditional controls. I wouldn't want to play Kirby Canvas Curse, Warioware or Professor Layton with a joypad. Luckily the PSV won't need to use touch to emulate traditional controls as smartphones have to, because it has lots and lots of buttons and two analogue sticks.

There's no need to cram touch into games like Uncharted, but they've done so in order to demonstrate all the different capabilities of the device in a single title. It'll probably use the gyros and cameras and GPS and god knows what else too. But it's all optional, as it should be in this case.

I tend to find people with a grudge against touchscreens normally own five year old blackberries or Nokia N95s, try living with touch for a while and then tell me it isn't a much better solution in many cases.

[Chooch]

if they are optional then what is the point?

You're an idiot.

Optional on traditional games. There will still be other games to take advantage of the controls. So like I said, best of both worlds. You obviously don't give a fuck about touch controlled games so you can just ignore them and be no worse off.

[Spacehost]

Ha, you're absolutely right and it's a hateful device.

That said, I did buy an iPad recently but the game I've played on it most is "Clean The Screen". In fact I haven't yet found anything on it worth playing that isn't throwaway shit, whereas I use my PSP daily. I'm really looking forward to the Vita, but the less I have to prod it with my greasy fingers, the happier I will be.

I really liked messing about with Pocket Gods, but there is a bit of a lack of deep touchscreen titles I admit- and I think a lot of that is down to the only real market for them being on mobile devices and the only real price point being $0.59. There are a lot of really clever ideas and uses for touch control in big, complex games and I think the Vita may provide a market for them to exist in.

[NecroMorrius]

I'm a bit taken aback that there are people who aren't collecting pension who see fit to argue against touchscreen usage in handheld devices.

[Uzi]

I'm sure I heard that's how it works- free data access for the web browser and basic social stuff, possibly even small downloads.

In the conference yesterday didn't they say if you had an at&t plan you could leech off that for free? I don't think the 3G is free, only certain deals with carriers where you're already paying them monthly for data usage.

3G won't be free across the board.

[mushashi]

Sony haven't region locked a console since 1999. Chill out.

And Nintendo had never ever region locked a handheld until this year (or 2 years ago for anyone unfortunate enough to buy a DSi and DSi-enhanced games from the wrong country).

Despite the PS3 being the first home console from Sony to be hardware region free (minus the weird SD quirks), they just closed down most of the practical ways to import games instead

[SMD]

In the conference yesterday didn't they say if you had an at&t plan you could leech off that for free? I don't think the 3G is free, only certain deals with carriers where you're already paying them monthly for data usage.

3G won't be free across the board.

No they said if you had an AT&T plan you could use their wifi hotspots for free.

[Sprite Machine]

if they are optional then what is the point?

To enable it to play the types of games that work better with a touch screen.

I refuse to believe anyone can be this fucking stupid.

[Professor Rob]

To enable it to play the types of games that work better with a touch screen.

I refuse to believe anyone can be this fucking stupid.

I couldn't believe he was that fucking stupid either, so I just assumed he was trolling.