It’s almost like Sony wants the PlayStation Vita to fail
Matt Hawkins Sony looks to have a potential hit on their hands, as their PSP successor has a considerable and surprising amount of buzz surrounding it. Too bad they’re also bound and determined to screw it all up.
When the Vita was announced, I seriously wondered what the point was. Sure the PSP had grown long in the tooth, and enough time had passed to warrant an update. But with both Nintendo and Apple the winners of the portable space, coupled with Sony’s inability to keep their PS3 going, I figured that the PSP would simply become and aside, perhaps spun into a phone, with no real changes to the baseline hardware.
Then stuff happened. The PSPhone came and went, with virtually little fanfare (the Xperia Play). Sony showed even less involvement that expected, to the point that it was clear that they had something else planned. And more importantly, Nintendo fumbled with it’s 3DS, leaving them with a huge opportunity.
There’s also the fact that portable gaming is still the hot thing in Japan; it’s easy to forget that the PSP was much more popular there than it was ever over there. Also note that HD gaming as a whole has not taken off in the east, given everyone’s tiny as hell apartment. That and how it’s still a commuter based society, so everyone craves most of their entertainment on the trains.
Hence why I should have not been shocked when pre-orders for the new device out there broke all kinds of records. Plus out here, it would seem that folks still want an honest to goodness portable gaming machine. The iPhone is great and all, I love all the games that can be found on it, the good ones at least, but I still prefer buttons at the end of the day.
The early crop of Vita software looked hot, which in turn has led plenty to be totally into the idea of actually picking the thing up. And it would seem that Sony had a winner on their hands! Except there’s a problem, and it’s called Sony. The finer details that are coming down the pipeline paint a picture that is going to be needlessly annoying.
Though ultimately, it’s further evidence of the Japanese game industry not knowing what the hell it’s doing. The biggest, most recent offense is the news regarding its memory cards. You see, instead of adopting a universal format, like the rest of the world. i.e SD cards… something that even the almighty Apple has begun to support in recent years… they are once again going with some goofy proprietary format.
But instead of going with the one used in the PSP, which at least is also standard with assorted Sony cameras, aka the Memory Stick ProDuo, which has also (somewhat) gone down in price over the years (since there’s now several vendors creating the thing), Sony is introducing ANOTHER format. One that’s even more expensive…
The 4 GB model will cost $29.99, the 8 GB model $44.99, the 16 GB model $69.99, and the 32 GB model will be… get this… $119.99. Talk about highway robbery at its most shameless.
And given their small size, it seems almost impossible that anyone will come up with an adapter, similar to the one that allowed micro SD cards to be used on a PSP with an adapter. Seriously Sony, you stand to make serious bank with your sexy new hardware; do you honestly want to toss that all aside, for the sake of a few extra bucks on the side?
Here’s even more good news: it’s also just been revealed that the Vita cannot, for some bizarre reason, support PSone games. While this might not seem like a big deal to many, it actually is. Such an omission is just plain weird… original PlayStation game has been supported on the PS2, PS3, PSP, and even PlayStation certified cell phones and tablets.
Moving onto games, the upcoming flagship title for any new PlayStation hardware is Ridge Racer. And admittedly, the latest one looks pretty damn awesome (far more so than the new one coming out on the PS3 and Xbox 360 that looks to be a Burnout wannabe)…
Now here’s the deal: there will only be three tracks included in the game. When word first hit the fan, many were up in arms, feeling that’s unacceptable in this day and age in which every racer has like 30 tracks. To be honest, I actually didn’t mind the news. After all, Daytona USA continues to prove how, it isn’t the quantity of the tracks, but the quality.
Of course, I clearly wasn’t seeing the whole picture. According to Andriasang, a TON of DLC is being planned for the system. Pretty much, each month will see a handful of new cars, plus a new track or two. Nothing has been announced for us Americans, but I can’t imagine it being all too different from what they’re getting in Japan, and prices that’s being quoted on that end is pretty absurd.
Ultimately, this is Namco’s doing, not Sony’s, but they really need to put their foot down and clamp down on such nonsense right off the bat. UPDATE: the full release schedule for Ridge Racer‘s DLC has been revealed, and it’s pretty mind-boggling.
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