I have always been a fan of portable gaming systems. Back in the 80s, it was all about the Nintendo Game and Watch and the less than impressive Tiger Electronic versions of classic arcade games. Portable gaming, in those days, was more of a novelty than anything else. When Nintendo came out with their much-anticipated Game Boy, though, my love for portable gaming went into overdrive.
Decades passed, and we have seen many successful (and unsuccessful) portable platforms fighting to be gamers’ choice of pocket real estate. Recently, there has been a surge in mainstream and casual gaming that has bled over to mobile, bringing online access fees in the form of data plans and the DLC model with it.
The newest addition to the portable video game market is the Sony PlayStation Vita. Instead of giving you a breakdown of hardware specs I will just tell you about my experiences with the with the system. The first thing that I noticed was how elegant the body is. It has a very “Apple” approach to hardware design with the finely crafted chrome around the face of the system. The next thing that I recognized was how small the D-Pad, the four face buttons, and the dual analog sticks are. It would seem that every part of the PSVita was small, but that is not the case. The main attraction to the system has got to be the large 5 inch OLED screen. Pictures do not do this system justice; you must see it in person. This screen also does more than just look beautiful, it is also features multi-touch input that responded very precisely.
I was welcomed to the system’s user interface with a series of mini-games that were just mere distractions, but did a good job of showing off all of the major gameplay features of the system. The Vita already had an update available, so I downloaded it in order to get the most current, fully enhanced experience. After updating, I proceeded to input my PSN ID into the Vita so I could continue playing certain games in between the PS3 and the new portable.
About 45 minutes had passed and I was ready to play with my new toy. The first game that I loaded up was Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and it was a sight to behold. As I looked into the 5 inch OLED screen, it felt like I was watching an incredibly high-def window of someone playing the game on a PS3. A portable system can’t look this great, can it? UMvC3 is gorgeous on the PSVita, with its super high frame-rate and the variety of colors that just pop out of the screen. Welcome to portable console gaming.
After playing some of the other Vita games, I wanted to see what else could be done with this mighty handheld. I was eager to test the party chat function, due to the fact that the PS3 is not the best place for game chat. I knew that the Vita had it’s own microphone and that it was put to some good use, so I invited a friend into my group. After that, something magical happened; I could hear my friend’s voice coming out of the Vita’s speakers. I knew from that moment on that this system wasn’t just a bunch of hardware specs, but a revolution. The next day, I did the same thing, but this time I was talking with two gentlemen from different parts of the world, one from the UK and the other from Japan.
The Vita isn’t perfect, though. The user interface can be at times, a cluster-fudge, and you can become lost in the menus very easily. Many of the functions are also too separate from each other, I mean, really, should the friends app, message app, and the party app all be separate from each other? Also, my Vita froze up on me twice in the same day. Granted you can just plug it into a power-source and hold the power button for twenty seconds or so. I can see a lot of trouble shooting for many Vita owners who are not always researching this stuff like I do.
Overall, the PSVita is a testament to the how far both portable gaming and consumer technology have come. There are still many features that I have yet to delve into, and over time, with system updates and a larger variety of apps, the Vita could become a very powerful multimedia tool. Now if you will excuse me, I will get back to playing some Wipeout 2048.
MK24ever
Oh well, I just go ahead and past my opinion here.
What I like:
– The design, just like the first PSP, I think it’s a sexy design, feels nice, robust and expensive as it should!
– The Launch games, Lumines, MNR, Stardust, Uncharted, and many others, there’s a game for everyone at launch!
– The screen*, Despite the problems associated with VITA’s screens, it still is one of the best on the market. ( http://community.eu.playstation.com/t5/PS-Vita-General-Discussion/Think-your-VITA-OLED-screen-is-perfect-Think-again/td-p/15220677 )
– Near – I’m still not sure what it is or what’s it for, all I know is that I keep refreshing it and spending time on it
– The menus music – I’m probably alone on this one, but I enjoy the music on the menus/near, it just makes sense to me.
– The analogs – At first I though they would allow very little controll, like “two speeds” only, but no, hey are on par with PS2 analogs maybe? (8-bit precision).
– The stand-by screen – Opening that page is a game by itself!
– The blue/red backlit PS button – Never realized that before on the videos, so a nice surprise I enjoy alot!
– The back touch surface – I can’t even understand how could this not have been implemented before on other devices, makes scrolling stuff on screen make logic! (no fingers in the way), the pattern on it is cool to!
– The lag-free menus scrolling – yup, I never experience a single drop frame while scrolling down and up those bubbles like a maniac!
What I don’t like:
– The OLED screen problem – This is by far my biggest complaint since it can’t be fixed by a new FW, I won’t extend beyond this.
– The UI – It seems it was designed for a 5 years old, I’d prefer XMB ten times to this bubbles thing, not only it looks bad as it’s not practical, my cheap galaxy Gio is much faster and simpler on all aspects, I think Sony tried to hard to avoid iOS and Android UI resemblances, and we ended up with this bubbles/pages mess.
– Lack of apps / Apps dead on arrival – So the “NGP” was announced like 2 years ago, it’s on the devs hands at many time, Sony had plenty of time to perfect all aspects of it, still we don’t even have a youtube app yet?? Even fridges comes with youtube now, then we have a facebook app that is already not working?? ***** were they doing all this time?? It’s unexcusable, that loop problem is a proof that they are lacking something important!
– The PC software – Coming from Media-Go software I used for my PSP-GO, that was a very decent software to that hing that installs on windows now for VITA?… words can’t explain!
– No IM that is I – I is for instant, messaging your PSN friends is a pain, it’s slow on all aspects, from oppening the “app” for that, to using the bad (in case of Portuguese) dictionary, everything is slugish on that part, messaging your friends should be all the time reachable button, and why is sending messages and “friends” on two different bubbles? Maybe I’m missing something…
– Images/Videos viewer – Again, why two bubbles? And why so damn basic, loading a big picture to the VITA won’t even allow to zoom it without you getting a low-res result, the VITA won’t re-render the images when zoomed, that is pathetic, even the chinese £80 tablets do that, as a photographer that ***** me off!!! The video support is still very weak to, no divX, mkv or other formats, stuck on mp4 like in 2005! That is WRONG!
– Sign in and Sign out…. to much of that!
So yes, there’s probably some more things that ***** me of on the system, I think Sony excelled on the games functionalitty (thankfully and it’s the only reason I won’t return both my VITAS) but dropped the ball everywhere else, thankfully, and looking back at PSP and PS3 I know how much Firmwares can improve everything, but I still think they had enough time to launch a proper experience outside of games, the system has the processing power to so much more, why not use it?!
What about you? Do you agree with my list? What grinds your gears and what makes you hug your VITA?
PS: A list of what I look for in the future:
-A Much better browser!
– Remote play of all PS3 content – Sony said it will happen, so let’s just hope it will! (shown on TGS with KZ3)
– A third party IM, whatsapp or MSN would be great, but MSN will never happen!
– A good and free GPS navigation app (Google)
– An e-mail app (Gmail, hotmail, yahoo, etc)
– A completly new UI like Microsoft did with X360 at one point, makes your system feel fresh and new again.
– Support for more video/images formats
– Redesign the PS-store
– Use your VITA with PS3/PS4 games as Wii-U is supposed to do
– Allow better resolution photos since one camera is 1.3mp and not 0.3 only.
– New and improved software for PC/MAC
– More advertising for the system
matt
Vita is 0.3 MP and 3ds is the same its called VGA resolution m8,WiiU is about 10x the power of ps3 now we just heard the RAM is a surprising amount alot more than 1gb but less than 8gb is saying its 4gb/6gb so goodbye sony/microsoft,because if this is true which is from a respectful source who has predicted everything right so far on Vita and WiiU then CGI movie graphics are possible FACT,3DS lite/pro is being shown at GDC with bigger screens,sonic fast menu’s,2 circle pads,slimmer design than current version,screen will be HD/3D,and ive heard it will have 1gig of RAM maybe to make the games HD when in 2D mode who knows but big things are going on in Nintendo at the moment and all i see if Trolls like Patcher trying to start a negative atmoshere before Nintendo have shown there cards which is Trolling end of from what i know about 3DS/WiiU so far,i can say that Nintendo will steal every 360/ps3 owner by 2013.
matt
oh WiiU tablet camera is HD sorry nice try.