I don't really get why there won't be a new Sony handheld

[Beagle 2]

The Vita was a flop. I loved it, but it flopped. Alright then.

But Nintendo have designed their entire new console around the huge market for portable gaming, and the fact that people want to remain in the same ecosystem, not keep switching between separate platforms. There's a massive appetite for it. Especially from me, who can't be arsed to sit in front of the telly for ages. Also Japan, all of Japan there.

Why won't Sony keep faith and continue to release iterations of the Vita that essentially run whatever you can take away and play from the Sony library? Games like Titan Souls, does anybody actually want to sit in front of a telly and play them? I never play PC games, but all the little indie games I see people raving about on here, I don't get why you'd want to play most of them hunched in front of a screen either. The cross-play thing works brilliantly. Darn it, it's such a great console, I think it needs a new version that makes it control like a dualshock. Literally the least likely thing. But the remote play thing is pretty shit on Vita and it wouldn't have to be if they released a better, purpose-built device for remote play. Market it as a PS4 periphery.

I don't understand why they wouldn't do it and why everybody wouldn't buy one. But everybody falls about laughing if a successor to the Vita is ever brought up.

[chand]

I love mine, it's a great little machine and the potential of it was great, but to me it seemed too expensive. I got mine when I was flush with cash and not paying any rent, and I had to spend over £300 on it to get one with a couple of games and a decent sized memory card (proprietary memory cards need to fuck right off, you still have to spend well over £50 to get a 32gb memory card which is nuts in the age of downloadable games).

The cross-play with the PS4 works fine but it's ultimately hamstrung by the lack of L2 and R2 equivalents; tapping a vague area of the rear touchscreen doesn't really cut it.

[madhair60]

I massively regret buying my Vita. Fuck all on it.

[ASFTSN]

Had some really good times with 1st gen PSP - but I never met anyone who'd owned one. If there was a Sony handheld with new (non-Japanese/Final Fantasy) RPGs on it I'd buy it in a second.

[imitationleather]

I love mine, it's a great little machine and the potential of it was great, but to me it seemed too expensive. I got mine when I was flush with cash and not paying any rent, and I had to spend over £300 on it to get one with a couple of games and a decent sized memory card (proprietary memory cards need to fuck right off, you still have to spend well over £50 to get a 32gb memory card which is nuts in the age of downloadable games).

The cross-play with the PS4 works fine but it's ultimately hamstrung by the lack of L2 and R2 equivalents; tapping a vague area of the rear touchscreen doesn't really cut it.

Never owned the Vita as I had a PSP and found I got basically zero use out of it compared to my DS as the games, while technically better, just weren't as good, fun and suited to the handheld format. But I'm not sure what the price point could have been. It's like how people would never dream of dropping £600 on an iPhone upfront, but £45/month for two years? Sign me up!

Handheld gaming, while with a large potential market, has very stiff competition in the form of mobile phone gaming. Lots of people are happy to just kill time on Candy Crush or some shite that costs under a fiver to buy (but then probably hundreds in in-app purchases so you can complete the fucker) and balk at paying proper console prices and then £40 per game for something little bigger than their phone.

[Kelvin]

If the Switch is a success, it's pretty much a forgone conclusion that Sony will try again, surely?

[Bazooka]

If the Switch is a success, it's pretty much a forgone conclusion that Sony will try again, surely?

Possibly, its back and forth, back and forth. The Wii U was a disaster commercially, but the 3DS was a huge success commercially. PSP/Vita did poorly compared to playstation/2/3 sales. The Vita and the Wii U both suffered from the same problems in regards to advertising, little to no advertising outside of Japan, and when advertised the casual or non gamer didn't realise each console was a completely new device and not just an upgrade. The cost doesn't help when someone with a main console is paying £40 for a new game let alone £40 for a new game on a hand held.

[chand]

Nintendo handhelds basically sell themselves though, don't they? Ever since the Game Boy, people buy Nintendo handhelds knowing that they're relatively cheap, good for kids, and will have at least one decent Mario and Zelda game. Sony don't have any handheld titles on that kind of level of recognition, they're famous for big-budget widescreen console games. The handheld Uncharted was alright but it felt like a condensed version of a proper console game. There were some really good bespoke titles like Tearaway, and some good versions of PS1/2/3 stalwarts like Wipeout and Killzone, but not a lot that screamed 'You need to spend £250+ to play this right now!'.

I got mine cos I was travelling to Bristol on a 3-hour train journey and back every couple of weeks and for a while it was a godsend, playing Rayman or FIFA on the train. But after it failed to explode initially, third-party companies stopped bothering with it.

Sony has a bunch of good exclusive IPs but they also need third-party backing, and you get into a chicken-and-egg situation where the machine won't sell cos the games aren't there, but the big publishers aren't making the games because they don't think the audience is there. FIFA was a good example really, it was alright but both EA and Konami gave up making an effort on their handheld football games during the PSP era, so EA just put out something that was essentially a port of the console version of FIFA from about three years earlier, and Konami never released a version of PES.

I'm still glad I bought my Vita but I rarely recommended it to others because it was clear about a year in that the sales weren't strong enough and the games started to dry up.

[madhair60]

My PSP is just a portable emulator machine.

[Thursday]

Wasn't it mainly the expensive memory cards that killed it. I mean yeah, lack of games, but I remember considering it numerous times, before remembering "nah, fuck that"

[Shay Chaise]

Arguably, Nintendo has more, bigger handheld first party titles than console titles. They're far too strong for anyone else to compete, unless Sony bring out a handheld PS4 with on the go Remote Play, and the tech isn't there yet. I'd love to play Titanfall 2 online on the go, anywhere, or Bloodborne or The Witcher or Firewatch or Street Fighter V but there's literally no way that will happen for several years til the tech is available and affordable. They currently have absolutely nothing, besides Persona, which can compete with Nintendo's handheld catalogue.

[Consignia]

Lack of games? Not sure I agree;



For me, it's hard to see it as a failure, I've loads of fun over the years with the bugger. It's handy because I travel a lot, and having the Vita is great boon for just when you've got an hour or so spare in the hotel.

Commerically for Sony, maybe. But as long I'm supplied with a flow of games, what a companies balance sheet looks like, I couldn't give a toss.

[Shay Chaise]

Fair point, there's actually a massive library if you're a sexual deviant.

[Consignia]

You should see what those filthy 3DS users are into.

[Beagle 2]

I don't see what you mean there Madhair, there's an absolute shit ton of games for it. Not enough blockbusters but enough, and I soon realised that wasn't the strength of it anyway. Even now there's enough indie games coming out for it. Maybe it will pootle on for ages just as it is but if it dies completely as a handheld Sony platform I'll be gutted.

There was about three games I wanted to play on 3DS and they were all £50. Poor.

[Shay Chaise]

The number of times I've gone into town with every intention of buying a Vita, and then come home without one. I genuinely don't know of anything besides P4G that is worth playing. People tell me about the emulation and so on, which is appealing, but I have so many other options for that. I almost bought one purely for Remote Play so I could play Bloodborne in the bath, but the more I read around the more I heard that Remote Play was laggy and the controls were awkward on almost everything. I don't know how they dropped the ball so badly on that.

[madhair60]

I don't see what you mean there Madhair, there's an absolute shit ton of games for it. Not enough blockbusters but enough, and I soon realised that wasn't the strength of it anyway. Even now there's enough indie games coming out for it. Maybe it will pootle on for ages just as it is but if it dies completely as a handheld Sony platform I'll be gutted.

There was about three games I wanted to play on 3DS and they were all £50. Poor.

Yeah lots of games that I've already played on PC. I keep grabbing indies for the Vita and not playing them, stuff I think I'll love on a handheld but end up giving 0 fucks. If I loved JRPGS, VNs and games where you touch a kid's thighs I might be more interested, but it's largely just cut-down crap and stuff that doesn't fit the platform at all.

Don't get me wrong, I've had a lot of fun playing games I've already played on it. That's genuinely not meant to be snide. It's just, that's all it seems to be.

[chand]

The number of times I've gone into town with every intention of buying a Vita, and then come home without one. I genuinely don't know of anything besides P4G that is worth playing. People tell me about the emulation and so on, which is appealing, but I have so many other options for that. I almost bought one purely for Remote Play so I could play Bloodborne in the bath, but the more I read around the more I heard that Remote Play was laggy and the controls were awkward on almost everything. I don't know how they dropped the ball so badly on that.

The remote play controls are an almost insurmountable issue, there's no real obvious way of adding L2 and R2 buttons, which most first and third person games now need, without making the machine cumbersome. I play PES remotely occasionally, and it works fine but it makes the manual pass really complicated, trying to use the rear touchscreen.

[Ignatius_S]

The Vita was a flop. I loved it, but it flopped. Alright then....

Yes – and the landscape of handheld gaming market has been shifting massively. As imitationleather was alluding to, smart devices have completely overtaken dedicated handheld gaming device.

When the Vita was still seen as a competitor to the 3DS, Iwata publicly said that Nintendo's main threat to handheld gaming was iPhones – it was already game over for Sony as far as they were concerned. Since that time, smart devices are gobbling up the majority of revenue – look at the figures. Sony failed twice in the hand-held gaming market and the market that those devices has shrunk.

...But Nintendo have designed their entire new console around the huge market for portable gaming, and the fact that people want to remain in the same ecosystem, not keep switching between separate platforms. There's a massive appetite for it...

The segment of the portable gaming market taken up by dedicated gaming devices has been shrinking. Nintendo has been doing well in the decreasing market and it would have a huge problem trying to go head to head against Sony and MS in the home console market – although the Switch arguably will play to its strengths, Nintendo's hand has been forced in that direction.

Given that the Switch has yet to launched and have no idea what hardware and software sales are going to be like, or how it will attract third-parties, arguably it's tad early and hyperbolic to say there's a "massive appetite" for it.

...
Why won't Sony keep faith and continue to release iterations of the Vita that essentially run whatever you can take away and play from the Sony library?...

Because it wants to avoid losing money? Sony has turned a corner, but the company was having problems.

... Games like Titan Souls, does anybody actually want to sit in front of a telly and play them?..

Over 400K have activated that game on Steam, so probably.

...Handheld gaming, while with a large potential market, has very stiff competition in the form of mobile phone gaming. Lots of people are happy to just kill time on Candy Crush or some shite that costs under a fiver to buy (but then probably hundreds in in-app purchases so you can complete the fucker) and balk at paying proper console prices and then £40 per game for something little bigger than their phone.

Although I would largely agree with that, a lot of punters balk at paying any money upfront for mobile gaming – free to play is a huge part of that sector. If someone likes playing casual games like Candy Crush, it doesn't necessary follow that they will enjoy Dragon Quest, for instance, even if price was removed.

Also, one reason that mobile gaming has taken off is that smartphone and tablets have gotten more powerful and common... and cheaper. Parents will hand down an old phone to their kids, rather than paying for a 3DS (for example). Added to that, a lot of people like the convenience of carrying round a single device.

If the Switch is a success, it's pretty much a forgone conclusion that Sony will try again, surely?

I think it will look at that kind of model – actually, even if the Switch isn't a success, I feel that eventually Sony would be doing this – but think the idea of something like the Vita is a very remote one.

Possibly, its back and forth, back and forth. The Wii U was a disaster commercially, but the 3DS was a huge success commercially. PSP/Vita did poorly compared to playstation/2/3 sales. The Vita and the Wii U both suffered from the same problems in regards to advertising, little to no advertising outside of Japan, and when advertised the casual or non gamer didn't realise each console was a completely new device and not just an upgrade. The cost doesn't help when someone with a main console is paying £40 for a new game let alone £40 for a new game on a hand held.

3DS had problems – e.g. High launch price, which had to be cut. I'm not sure that a lack of advertising for a Wii U was an issue – for instance, in the States, I say a lot of roadshows – but as you say, people were confused.

Personally, I think a massive flaw was the concept. The Wii's was dead easy to communicate; the Wii U's wasn't and was made worse by tablets having taken off in their own right.

Nintendo didn't really seem to know what to do with the gamepad and had strange priorities (e.g. making sure that the console had low power consumption). Hard to develop for and weak compared to the next generation of MS and Sony, it was going to be a struggle.

Wasn't it mainly the expensive memory cards that killed it. I mean yeah, lack of games, but I remember considering it numerous times, before remembering "nah, fuck that"

That didn't certainly didn't help but there was a high price point for the machines and Sony wasn't able to attract developers as it needed to.

Personally, I really like mine but it's not got the kind of library that everyone would go for.

...There was about three games I wanted to play on 3DS and they were all £50. Poor.

Possibly that says more about your taste in games and how you make purchasing decisions that about the 3DS library.

Most games RRP is £35 but would have usually been a fair bit cheaper.

The number of times I've gone into town with every intention of buying a Vita, and then come home without one. I genuinely don't know of anything besides P4G that is worth playing...

It's largely JRPGS that I've used it for.

[hewantstolurkatad]

PSP was class, I still use mine. It's feeling a bit old now but in 2005 it was such an amazing leap, throw in the official PlayStation emulator a year later and it was an absolute beast.


Vita quite oddly seemed to double down on the PSP's failures, I'm not sure what sony were thinking with it at all tbh. It looks like there's some very good games but they awkwardly jump between being unsuited to portable gaming and being niche things that will struggle to justify a full price. Nintendo are able to sustain a portable market through the strength of their own games, brand and rep for developing machines a kid would struggle to break without actively trying to. Sony sat far too close to smartphones and the like with Vita.

Vita felt like something Sony were kind of forced into. There still was a market for PSP but it was rapidly declining as developers got repeatedly fucked over by the widespread piracy, had Sony held out any longer they'd have probably lost the place they had in the marketplace entirely and had to start from scratch and scrap whatever ps4 integration plans they may have had.

[imitationleather]

I know it's already been mentioned, but the "carrying two devices" thing hasn't really been an issue for me, because I just don't play my 3DS outdoors. I'd put it in my bag for a while in case I fancied a quick game of Mario Kart of whatever but in the end I found I'd never get it out (oi oi). There's definitely a cultural aversion among adults to be seen playing handheld gaming devices in the UK, I think. Only place I'd really consider playing it outdoors would be while on a long-ass flight.

Main reason I got a handheld was to avoid arguments with the missus about me constantly taking over the telly (even though that is mine, just like all the technology in our flat, I bought it and if she thinks she's having it when if we break up she can whistle).

[Beagle 2]

The remote play controls are an almost insurmountable issue, there's no real obvious way of adding L2 and R2 buttons, which most first and third person games now need, without making the machine cumbersome. I play PES remotely occasionally, and it works fine but it makes the manual pass really complicated, trying to use the rear touchscreen.

You could do what I did which is buy an official holder for a dualshock and an Xperia for remote play, then jam your Vita in it. I think I needed an extra plaggy band.

Really I'm just trying to justify buying my third one, I lost the first and my second got pinched.

Yeah lots of games that I've already played on PC. I keep grabbing indies for the Vita and not playing them, stuff I think I'll love on a handheld but end up giving 0 fucks. If I loved JRPGS, VNs and games where you touch a kid's thighs I might be more interested, but it's largely just cut-down crap and stuff that doesn't fit the platform at all.

Aye fair fucks, I never play Indie games on PC as I say so it's brilliant for that for me. Can't stand JRPGs. Some decent racing games on that system too.

Ah fuck it I've been paid gonna have to get one...