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GameSpot: PlayStation Vita 10 Years Later

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


The PS Vita is a beloved handheld with a diehard cult following. But how does the failed Sony handheld hold up 10 years later to someone using it for the first time?

For many, Vita means life. It means to be a part of a cult following that believed in the handheld more than its makers did. Sony launched the PS Vita with the intention of bringing the AAA game experience to the handheld market, with big flagship IPs like Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Killzone: Mercenary. But in actuality, the console would see its success from indie games and visual novels like Persona 4 Golden, Hotline Miami, and Virtue's Last Reward.

Kurt Indovina missed the boat to Vita Island when it was first released in the states back in 2012, but now 10 years later, he's picking up the console up for the first time to see what the fuss is about. Join Kurt in a rather unexpected journey to understanding what it means to be a Vita Islander.

I would like Sony to make a successor.
 

CamHostage

Member
I'm glad that Kurt got there as far as understanding why Vita Island was a pleasant place to be marooned for a few years. (Although I wish he had gotten more out of Killzone Mercenary beyond its mechanical gimmicks, KZ Merc was by far my most-enjoyed Killzone game.) Vita felt nice, looked great, was fun to have that much power in a portable (and 3DS rarely took advantage of its own abilities sadly, particularly if you were into core franchises outside of Nintendo products, those games were gone almost completely after the first year or two,) and the indie scene and the dual-buy sustained Vita gamers for a long time even after it was clearly hopeless. I also hear people enjoyed Remote Play at the time; it was never smooth in my house for some reason, but others played fast-paced, hardcore games no problems wirelessly from their console to their Vita. Plus, there just was heart to Vita in weird ways. Like, I remember people queuing up for Wake-Up Club, and similarly the Doko Demo Issyo online game had a lot of people discovering that franchise for the first time and chatting with people or making friends to build up a Dungeon squad. Turning on Vita and getting little bubbles of messages and updates was part of the fun. (I always checked the leaderboards and progress logs on Vita, whereas I'm not sure I ever looked at the tabs on PS4, that interest in what other players were doing in games died for me after the PS3/360 era and only existed on the handheld.) Developers loved supporting it for some strange reason, and the fanbase kept buying games because devs didn't give up on it.

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...It's impossible to get the feeling of why people cared about Vita today, though.

Its library shows its age and is thin from lack of variety and big names, the horsepower is not impressive anymore, many of its better games have since been ported (or existed on other hardware in the first place,) the sweet deal of cross-buy is meaningless now, the Switch does much of what Vita does effortlessly, there are no "impossible port" games to check out, the online communities are gone, and the PS Store is gone so there are no more developers dropping off their surprise little Vita port of a PS4 indie game just because they can. Vita Island was a time and place that you can no longer reach (I still wish Sony had put out a "Vita Pro" before it was too late, just a little boost of horsepower to overcome some framerate hitches and maybe an improvement to the ergonomics, plus a SD card slot to put those Vita Cards properly in hell,) and maybe you can discover relics and totems of it out there, but it'll never quite make sense why people cared for this failed system if you weren't there at the time.
 
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Dream-Knife

Banned
To be frank, if WiiU hadn't tanked I'm pretty sure Nintendo would still manage to have two consoles.

Sony gave up on Vita because they made some wrong decisions at launch, and decided to focus on the PS4 that was doing pretty well.

With the cloud streaming gen approaching us, pretty sure the age of dedicated portable consoles is over.
No, it's due to the increasing cost of development. It's the same reason Sony is looking to expand beyond playstation.

What do you define as a dedicated portable?
 
I wish I got a Vita closer to launch and not near the end, because I really liked the system a lot. It's frustrating to see so many things that the Vita got shit on for be completely handwaved for the Switch. You couldn't mention Uncharted without the discussion immediately going to "shitty below native resolution graphics," when it should have been "holy shit this is a real ass Uncharted game on a portable." I feel like with a fairer shake the system could have had much more success.

They fucked up with the memory cards big time though, they really shouldn't have gone proprietary - or they should have at least made the prices near SD card level. That is one complaint that is 1000% valid.
 

Topher

Gold Member
Vita should have been a success. If it had proper first party support and standard expansion options like microSD rather than proprietary crap then things could have been different.
 

lachesis

Member
Ys 8 was pretty good on Vita too. I mean, PS4 version was obviously superior - but it held up pretty well, albeit missing some Dana specific parts.
My un-modded launch OLED one is still sitting pretty on the charging dock. Still holds its charge pretty well (as far as I can tell), but one of these days will check up on its health - and give a few games a go.

I certainly would have loved if it was supported more. It's a shame Sony gave it up so quickly. They should have really really bargained for at least 1 Monster Hunter.
 

Trunx81

Member
Everyone always talking about Killzone, but the real multiplayer fun was on Unit 13. Although it lacked the depth of the Socom games, it was really great to play, had for its time nice graphics and a friend of mine and I played the hell out of it via online.

Still got my vita lying around and I will surely boot it up again in the future, although the Switch has taken its place as my go-to handheld.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
Absolutely great machine in my opinion, the OLED was the superior model. Thankfully the Switch OLED has filled the gap for me.
 
Cheeses other handhelds in build quality.
Great device, lacking software.
PS+, 2x PS Vita/ 2x PS3 / 2xPS4 era was the best deal in gaming. (I think i have all the big Sony games for Vita through PS+)
 

Rest

All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
Ten years later and I still haven't seen one in the flesh.
 

ZehDon

Member
In a bit of coincidence, I recently dusted mine off to get into the homebrew scene. It's a shame Sony left it do die; it's great hardware.
 

Bakkus

Member
Most outdated console ever in terms of play worth. Every 1st party title of note has been remastered on the PS4 and everything else on the system is also on PC. With SteamDeck now out, there is no reason to go back.
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
The Playstation Vita is the biggest Playstation flop from Sony. And this was very obvious right before launch when they should next to no games. The writing was already on the wall before the device is released. Remember those tech demo of Yakuza or MGS4? Bioshock Vita? LMAO. And the countless Monster Hunter 4G rumors for Vita from the delusional fanboys who are desperate for a game.

I can't decide which one is the my best memories here. The iconic "The Playstation Vita is destined for greatness" article. The Final Fantasy Type-0 erroneous fiasco. Or the Vita TV announcement thread where people were hyping it to be a game changer or calling it a brilliant move. Or the Call of Duty Vita which was hyped to be a system seller, only to turned out to be a mediocre outsourced port that Activision doesn't even care (which flopped so bad it literally killed the development studio Nihilistic Software)
 
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IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

I loved the Vita. I have vivid memories of playing Persona 4 Golden for hours in the dark on my dad’s couch in Chicago flying around the world of Gravity Rush from an airplane seat and playing Murasaki Baby before bed. The Vita felt good and it made me happy. And then, Sony killed it.

For the past seven years, I’ve been wondering why the Vita had to die. So today, we’re finally going to grieve and analyze together: What happened to the Vita, and what if it were still around today?


It’s been difficult to not think about the Vita recently. The mobile market is on fire right now, with Valve’s Steam Deck shipping out, the Playdate on its way from Panic, and of course Nintendo’s Switch and Switch Lite at the top of the charts. Not to mention, Microsoft is courting the handheld space with Cloud Gaming and Game Pass, and mobile gaming represents the largest and fastest growing segment in the industry. From consoles to PC, it seems every company is investing in handheld play. Every company except Sony.

To be clear, Sony doesn’t have to compete in the handheld market just because everyone else is doing it, but the tragedy here is they were doing it with the Vita – and as LL Cool J would say, they were doing it well. Even with an embarrassing amount of options in the handheld space, I still want a new Vita. I want one in black and another in a peach colorway; I want the entire back panel to be a touchpad with DualSense-style haptics and I want a little hole in one of the corners so I can attach charms, just like I did on the original. And, charm-hole aside, I don’t think I’m alone here.

Check the link for more.
 

Same ol G

Member
They are right about one thing, the people who like this thing are truly acting like a cult.
Back then the system was shit, no sd cards, no unique games, high price, no first party support, worthless touch gimmicks.
The best thing about Vita was the screen, the colors looked really good next to the 3ds but the 3ds had glassles 3d which was quite impressive and had more of a wow factor when compared to the OLED screen.
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
They are right about one thing, the people who like this thing are truly acting like a cult.
Back then the system was shit, no sd cards, no unique games, high price, no first party support, worthless touch gimmicks.
The best thing about Vita was the screen, the colors looked really good next to the 3ds but the 3ds had glassles 3d which was quite impressive and had more of a wow factor when compared to the OLED screen.
The system was definitely not shit (best DPad ever and analog sticks feel better than nubs and as good if not better than Switch’s ones), SD card support issue was overblown by some of the same people paying much more per GB as they bought their iPhones with bigger storage options and pretend to have every single game downloaded on storage (despite many buying them in cartridge form, which was and still is viable today with consoles like Switch).
No first party what? You had games like Uncharted, Tearaway, Killzone (Killzone was a technical marvel), Gravity Rush, Wipeout, etc… as well as PS1 and PSP emulation (tons of titles, but BC seems to matter to those who screech when it is not there, excellent BC did nothing for Vita and PS3 and people wonder why it is not Sony’s first and top priority sometimes) and a port of Unity for homewbrew games that was available and an open SDK by Sony too. I liked my 3DS, but whoa that is a bad take…
 
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TLZ

Banned
The best thing about Vita was the screen, the colors looked really good next to the 3ds but the 3ds had glassles 3d which was quite impressive and had more of a wow factor when compared to the OLED screen.
Their first 3DS versions had bad 3D that gave people headaches. It wasn't good until the New 3DS where 3D felt somewhat comfortable. But until that happened, people stopped caring about it and Nintendo noticed, dropped 3D, which led to the 3D-less versions later.
 

TDiddyLive

Member
SD card support issue was overblown
Your argument loses validity when you say this. I personally never bought a Vita directly due to this. The overpriced proprietary memory cards were a non-starter for me and many of my friends who owned the PSP. It was especially bad considering SD cards were used on just about everything when the Vita came out and were way more affordable.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Your argument loses validity when you say this. I personally never bought a Vita directly due to this.
Your loss :).

The overpriced proprietary memory cards were a non-starter for me and many of my friends who owned the PSP. It was especially bad considering SD cards were used on just about everything when the Vita came out and were way more affordable.
Your loss again. They were more expensive than cheap SD cards but also performed well compared to the cheapest of them IIRC… get one medium size memory card or a small one for saves and buy game in physical form too which in some cases are/were way cheaper than on PSN… or just miss out on the entire console and all its games (including the best way to play PSP games and tons of PS1 games on the go, but again BC matters most if it is not there apparently).
 
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CamHostage

Member
They were more expensive than cheap SD cards but also performed well compared to the cheapest of them IIRC…

Eh, that unfortunately wasn't the case, or at least wasn't the case past 32GB. Vita came out I think before SDXC was formalized, and even though Vita was a proprietary card type, it seemed to have a lot of problems (some of which were familiar to Android devices in that in-between phase, so maybe or maybe not that there was a relation?) They never went above 64GB, and the 64GB model was never even sold by Sony outside of Japan; I imported one, and had terrible corruption issues with my Vita games. (Maybe I got a bootleg somehow, but I got mine through a reputable retailer, and I'm not sure if there ever actually were knockoff Vita cards?)

I don't remember much about speed rating or anything like that on the working Vita cards, but generally it seemed to test out (in unscientific but as equivalent as possible) at speeds lower than Class10 devices at the time.
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Eh, that unfortunately wasn't the case, or at least wasn't the case past 32GB. Vita came out I think before SDXC was formalized, and even though Vita was a proprietary card type, it seemed to have a lot of problems (some of which were familiar to Android devices in that in-between phase, so maybe or maybe not that there was a relation?) They never went above 64GB, and the 64GB model was never even sold by Sony outside of Japan; I imported one, and had terrible corruption issues with my Vita games. (Maybe I got a bootleg somehow, but I got mine through a reputable retailer, and I'm not sure if there ever actually were knockoff Vita cards?)

I don't remember much about speed rating or anything like that on the working Vita cards, but generally it seemed to test out (in unscientific but as equivalent as possible) at speeds lower than Class10 devices at the time.
The benchmarks were laughable, USB transfer tests were not able to tell much.

A 32 GB card or smaller and buying the games physically (which was cheaper than digital in most cases) was viable more than the huge storm in a teacup made it up to be. Did it help to kill the console? Yes, congrats I guess. Am I bitter about it? You betcha ;).
 

TDiddyLive

Member
Your loss :).


Your loss again. They were more expensive than cheap SD cards but also performed well compared to the cheapest of them IIRC… get one medium size memory card or a small one for saves and buy game in physical form too which in some cases are/were way cheaper than on PSN… or just miss out on the entire console and all its games (including the best way to play PSP games and tons of PS1 games on the go, but again BC matters most if it is not there apparently).
Except I’m not feeling like it was a loss. There isn’t a single game exclusive to that system that sounds like it would have been worth it. And if your best comparison for the Sony memory cards is to put it up against the cheapest (and most likely crappiest) SD cards, I feel like I avoided a lot of trouble and made the right decision.
 

Chukhopops

Member
I loved the Vita back then, played a lot of great games on it but Sony killed it before it could reach its potential and its library is obviously dwarfed by the 3DS.

Also it had the most under-used features ever with the two cameras (!), back touch thingy and gyro. I think only two games used it all (Tearaway and Gravity Rush) and they were average at best.
 

CamHostage

Member
The overpriced proprietary memory cards were a non-starter for me and many of my friends who owned the PSP. It was especially bad considering SD cards were used on just about everything when the Vita came out and were way more affordable.

If that's your story then that's your telling, but Vita was in big trouble in the market it was launching in, and the vast majority of gamers (including many, many people who owned PSPs) never even looked at the system as an option to upgrade to in the first place. Most people never knew that the Memory Card pricing situation sucked because they were never going to get the thing that the Memory Cards went into. The system never got over, and yes, the conversation among the few who were talking about it in a negative light were largely focused on the Memory Cards and costs, but it really didn't get that much negative talk or positive talk. It didn't get very much talk at all. It really wasn't until its death rattles, when so many games were coming out cross-buy and indies leapt into its market and the fans who did buy in looked around and still saw nothing close to its capacities or feel, that the "Vita Means Life" cult really started to chant out loud. Until then, there were some people loving Wipeout and some people wowwed by Uncharted and some people wondering if PS TV would be a good low-fi buy, but everybody knew very early on that this was never going to be a second PSP, and there was nothing Sony could do about it.

You could buy games on carts, and PSN games still were indie-sized rather than massive (even most retail games were on 2GB cards and I think the system never had carts over 4GB.) People could deal with it, if they wanted to. The Memory Card price issue was ugly compared to SD Cards at the time, but if the games and interest were there, it could have been overcome (or at least there would have been more questions and anticipation as to *when* prices would come down; instead the dialog, where there was any dialog, was "fuck this, look at those prices" and that was as far as chatter went.) People didn't want it, or didn't know it was there to be wanted.

3DS suffered at this time too, and ultimately was amounted to being a shadow of its predecessor. (It eventually built up an audience, but the variety of games and the types of publishers who created titles for it was drastically different from DS; if it hadn't been for some great Nintendo titles and then Monster Hunter, 3DS might have bit the dust alongside the Wii U.) This was a bad time for portables, which is weird to think about considering the superhigh-highs of the PSP vs DS fight, but there were a number of reasons why things were different the second matchup, not the least of which being that mobile had come along and drank their milkshakes.
 
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Same ol G

Member
SD card support issue was overblown by some of the same people paying much more per GB as they bought their iPhones with bigger storage options and pretend to have every single game downloaded on storage (despite many buying them in cartridge form, which was and still is viable today with consoles like Switch).
I'm not even gonna argue about this point, it is well documented.
No first party what? You had games like Uncharted, Tearaway, Killzone (Killzone was a technical marvel), Gravity Rush, Wipeout, etc…
The games you point out is almost their complete output for the entire generation, maybe i shouldn't have said no support and called it almost non existent.
as well as PS1 and PSP emulation (tons of titles, but BC seems to matter to those who screech when it is not there,
Seriously, do you honestly believe that's a good argument to make when someone points out their was no support, BC from previous gen never counts as supporting the hardware, since when do people buy a console specifically to play games they were already playing 10 years ago.
Their first 3DS versions had bad 3D that gave people headaches. It wasn't good until the New 3DS where 3D felt somewhat comfortable. But until that happened, people stopped caring about it and Nintendo noticed, dropped 3D, which led to the 3D-less versions later.
The reason why the 2ds came out is because the 3d fad started to die, major TV manufacturers stopped making 3d models, Nintendo just followed the trend.
Also they never stopped selling the 3ds, the 2ds was just an extra option just as the Switch lite.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Except I’m not feeling like it was a loss. There isn’t a single game exclusive to that system that sounds like it would have been worth it. And if your best comparison for the Sony memory cards is to put it up against the cheapest (and most likely crappiest) SD cards, I feel like I avoided a lot of trouble and made the right decision.
Sure, again as someone who owns one and had enjoyed what it could offer… your loss :).
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Seriously, do you honestly believe that's a good argument to make when someone points out their was no support, BC from previous gen never counts as supporting the hardware, since when do people buy a console specifically to play games they were already playing 10 years ago.
It was mostly that if they offer BC nobody really rewards them for it but if they do not they get trolls out of the woodworks touting it as a crime against humanity and well MS smartly capitalised on it.
 

stranno

Member
As a devotee of Playstation Portable, my favorite console of all time, I expected Vita to be a worthy successor, but it really failed in many areas.

It was the perfect opportunity to crush Nintendo, with a very low spec portable and a 3D gimmick nobody cared about.

Well, at least it is the best Playstation Portable model so far. The embedded hardware for the Allegrex chip and the flawless GPU/ME emulation is amazing, certainly the best backwards support Sony ever developed.

If anyone is wondering how the "Vita" (Next Generation Portable) looked in the very beginning:




Nihilistic's Burning Skies, what a cool game, probably the most underrated game in the system.
 
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