Why does the Vita get so much flak?

[deserteagleeye]

I never had a psp so now I can play most of them digitally. I've got about ten psp games on there already. Though I'm a bit paranoid that it's all on one tiny as fuck 32gb memory card.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

The biggest issue I have with the Vita are the dual touch screens. It just completely messes with me in a way that's difficult to describe. Hell, using the touch pad to actually use menus is another thing I strongly dislike doing since I was raised in an environment which strongly discouraged touching screens. That being said though, neither of those complaints are deal breakers for me. I want to want a Vita but there are two games that I want for it:

Gravity Rush and, J-Star Victory VS but the later is a game I'll probably getting once the Korean version is out on the PS3. I really do want to want a Vita but I have no reason to get one. I'm sure the indies would be fun but there isn't really anything exclusive to the Vita that I want yet. There are imports sure but I would really rather not do that due to overall expenses.

 

[Sack of Cheese]

Unfortunately Sony shot themselves in the foot right out the gate with the cost of the Vita plus the cost of proprietary memory cards. If the Vita had been cheaper off the bat, and used industry standard memory cards, things would have turned out differently by now.

It's true. I also noticed the PSVita came out much later than the 3DS, thus developers have been focusing more on the 3DS for a while. The situation is balanced now tho.

And for the love of hell why isn't Deception, Dynasty warriors XL, Akiba's trip and other Vita/PS3 games CROSS BUY!

Because they're not first-party games I suppose? I only see SONY or indies cross-buy games on PSN.

My biggest problem with the Vita over the 3DS is the way it implements it's hardware. I hate the Vita's touch screen, I hate the stupid back touch pad, and I hate that most of the interesting games for the Vita like Tearaway force you to use those to a frustrating extent. Rather than focus on making good games, it seems like too much of the focus lies on "How can we make games...that use these things?"

The Vita is a perfectly lovely console that is a delight to hold, a delight to play, and I think in a few years I will probably have a lot of games for it that I love and enjoy.

But right now it's just this dust collecting paperweight where I have to get fingerprints on the screen to even select the game I wanna play (or maybe I'm just dumb. Can you select icons on the home menu without actually touching them?)

Vita's touch screen works just like a smartphone's, it's not pin-point accurate like a 3DS, but it is still useful if implemented correctly. Rear touch pad can be disabled in a lot of games, and is a lot useful in games where you need more buttons than allowed.
I thought Tearaway's rear touchpad was a nice... touch. It adds more variations, sort of, but different strokes for different folks.

I use screen protectors on every of my handhelds device and haven't noticed any fingerprints on the screen so far.

To answer the question of this thread: It?s because the Vita rarely comes up outside of the 3DS vs. Vita question (which the 3DS is clearly winning). While the 3DS has killer apps (or ?games? if you wanna go nowhere) that is worth talking about by themselves.

But Vita does have good games! I don't wanna use Metacritic in my argument, but browsing top rated releases, you can see that Vita has more than 40+ games at 80 overall score or better.

Personally I think the WiiU gets a LOT more unnecessary flack.

On the side note, WiiU's 2014 lineup is pretty good so far. I can't wait to play all the exclusives!

The lack of really big new titles is what drags Vita down a lot. There's just not enough content to go with it, and what content they do release for it is mostly eastern RPGs that are quite often Monster Hunter -esque in gameplay, grindy and focused on multiplayer.

It's a pretty damn fine handheld, it just lacks in content, honestly.

Vita has only a handful of hunting games, Soul Sacrifice, Ragnarok odyssey, Valhalla knight, Toukiden, God eater...
Aside from them, high profile games releases so far are Danganronpa, TxK, Luftrausers, Toukiden (which I find more fun than reviewers stated), Hatsune Miku: Project Diva f, Final Fantasy X/X-2 collection.
Here's a compiled list:

Spoiler

The Vita doesn't really get much flak nowadays that I've seen, however there's still the (false) stigma of it having no games. There are literally hundreds of games that have been developed solely for the Vita, and I'd estimate half of them had retail releases, not just PSN downloads. Some are only available in NA or EU, and some are only available in JP, but looking at it, there's about 90 titles that are available in all the territories.

This does not count all the PS1 and PSP titles that are available for download. Adding those in there's likely somewhere in the neighborhood of 750-1000 games available to play on the system.

The Vita was originally hurting due to high price, absurdly high proprietary memory card price, and lack of games and content. At this point, however, the price has dropped to something reasonable, the memory cards are more reasonably priced though not great, and there's no lack of content. At this point, it's just Sony's failure to market these points

To be honest, though, I never see any advertising for the 3DS anymore either or any of it's games. I think the Vita just suffers from the original stigma of having no games for it and Sony's not doing any marketing to counter that belief. Judging by some of the comments above, that theory seems pretty solid.

It's true! Some vocal gamers keep going on about how "Vita has no game", "Vita is doomed" without looking at its current state.

I never had a psp so now I can play most of them digitally. I've got about ten psp games on there already. Though I'm a bit paranoid that it's all on one tiny as fuck 32gb memory card.

With PSP games, you can still delete them after you've finished with them, the save data is still on the memory card. That said, I also find it annoying to delete installed data and wait for it to redownload if I wanna play it again.

 

[Goliath100]

But Vita does have good games! I don't wanna use Metacritic in my argument, but browsing top rated releases, you can see that Vita has more than 40+ games at 80 overall score or better.

I did not say it didn't have "good games", I said it have no Killer App. You know, a game that create some blood discussion around itself.

 

[Exhuminator]

Sony didn't promise us that, they promised us a portable PS3, that left a lot of people annoyed, and the system suffers for it.

And this is exactly precisely my only "flak" with the system. I don't care that you can play "indies" on Vita, or that you can play PSP or PS1 games on the Vita, or that you can play ports on the Vita. What I care about are playing exclusive AAA console-on-the-go experiences. Think Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, Resistance: Burning Skies... in 2012 there was a push for exactly this sort of experience. But it just fizzled out after that, the original intention of the Vita got diluted. Not that I don't appreciate the visual novels and JRPGs we are getting for the system, but I can't help but feel bummed about Vita's hardware potential not being pushed.

 

[Aluwolf]

To sum it up in as little words as possible, it was unacceptable for the modern era. The battery couldn't be removed, you needed a Sony only memory card and a unique charging cable. The later models got rid of most of those issues, but by that time it was already too late for it to really be a killer device.

We know sony was capable of better than this because of the use of micro usb and how you can even replace a ps3's controller internal battery. That led to a general dislike of the product.

 

[WeepingAngels]

My Vita is a $250 indie machine and I don't really care for indie games. I have two good games on it, Persona 4 Golden and Final Fantasy X sub-HD (atleast on the Vita it is).

I have even stopped playing PS1 games on it, I have been playing PS1 games for many years and am finally tired of them.

Further, if you ever tried to take the Vita outdoors with you then you know you can't see a damn thing on that screen. Not a good thing when a mobile device isn't really mobile.

 

[Gatx]

I bought a Vita and for the most part, I love my Vita. What I really dislike is that it's not fully backwards compatible with the PSP portion of the PSN store, and there are so many games that I want to play that do not get licensed (I am well aware that the Vita has a sizable library overseas), God Eater 2 and Phantasy Star Online 2 being the biggest ones.

 

[Eve Charm]

Actually damn I forgot about this, The best reason to hate on the vita was and I'm not sure if it was just japan or if it got canned everywhere but they announced if you owned a PSP game hard copy, for free or for a fee you'd be able to get a downloadable vita version.


Now not that I would have converted my entire PSP library of games if it cost money but hell ya I wouldn't have minded paying 5 or 10 bucks for digital copies of Personas, Valkeria chronicles 2 and monster hunter. I haven't turned my psp on in years but hell I would have booted those up a lot of the time on the vita if it was there.


So ya ditching the old cross buy last minute, sony's handhelds have to be the most anti consumer products ever, I mean hell you could have at least let the damn vita accept pro duo memory.

 

[Sack of Cheese]

But Vita does have good games! I don't wanna use Metacritic in my argument, but browsing top rated releases, you can see that Vita has more than 40+ games at 80 overall score or better.

I did not say it didn't have "good games", I said it have no Killer App. You know, a game that create some blood discussion around itself.

It all depends on your personal taste, I suppose.
I got a Vita for Soul Sacrifice and Killzone. Loved the concept of SS and previous Killzone games.

 

[Goliath100]

It all depends on your personal taste, I suppose.

No it's not, you can design an attentional killer app (beyond simply being good). It need to stand out, have its own personality, be somewhat unique, something that can generate its own hype and will be talked about after it comes out. For a good exemple of this, see Fire Emblem Awakening, which hits every point I said. A terrible killer app, is Killzone: Mercenary. Why? Because it belongs to oversaturated genre and have problems standing out a serie.