PS Vita Review

The PS Vita, the successor to the Sony PSP 7 years in the making, initially released in Japan in December 2004 ahead of North America, Europe and elsewhere. Boasting impressive power, far superior and upgraded over the PSP and having the capability of low end PS3 graphics meant for a truly impressive showing on certain games. With the added right analogue stick, being missing prior on the PSP making one of the only gripes I had with the portable console. Adding a touchscreen and rear touch pad to help combat against it’s main competitor in the Nintendo 3DS, and to allow for games to be able use the rear pad as the R2/L2 buttons would allow for greater ease of playing. All of this should have made for a winning combination.

Having the back catalogue of Sony behind it, and initially launching with ports or new addition in triple A games, such as the incredible Borderlands 2 with all the DLC, little big planet PSVITA, Uncharted Golden Abyss, just a few to name. You’d suspect Sony would go lets make sure we put out games like this and of this calibre regularly to help sustain growth, interest and sales. But they went Nah fuck it, it’s not selling as well, let’s can every current big game plan, release some random shit on it, and then be confused later on why nobody is buying it. Honestly in this case Sony was their own big bad, they literally shot themselves in the foot and then watched it slowly rot from lack of medical care.

This console by all accounts at the time was impressive, once again shitting on Nintendos’ counterpart. But what the 3DS lacked in power, it sure made up for in an incredible game library, even pinching the Monster Hunter series from Sony, upping the niche market prior to the booming Monster Hunter World. Having the capability of video playback, audio playback, a built in camera for augmented reality games, decent graphics, load times and expendable memory. Even if those bigger memory cards would require you to re-mortgage your house as they were specific built for the Vita. It also had proper online on the go multiplayer shooter games in Killzone and Call of Duty. Everything should have gone to the moon but once again because Sony went nah fuck it again, and it crashed and burned. Which ultimately has left this console a bit of a forgotten treasure.

I love my Vita and still play it regularly, especially when I can afford a cheap new game, as for the most part most of the Vita games now are fairly rare and nothing short of extortionate. I used to love the store, as this was a great place to buy and horde loads of PS1 classics, or earlier PSP titles, making it a decent retro game player in it’s own right as well. Having a more reliable and better battery and brighter OLED screen, making for a spruced experience on the older games. Not to mention the cross play feature on PS4, where you could stream and play your PS4 games on your handheld, if your TV was currently preoccupied. Or if you had the PSTV which certain games and downloaded games from your vita could be played directly on your TV with a dualshock 3 or 4. This is a cool premise seeing as there were initially specific mini games developed for the console and some games would benefit from being on the big screen, but you can guess what Sony did. They went Nah, fuck it, it’s not selling well, as we released it and then did shit all with it again, so lets can it.

Having sold in the region between 15-16 million which is a whole 65 million short of the PSP by many accounts it is considered a commercial failure. Even though it enjoyed a full 8 year life span up until Sony officially stopped making the game carts, and allowing new digital games. It gained a cult following like market as it become some what of a JRPG game machine for the latte part of it’s life allowing that fanbase to enjoy the likes of Persona 4 Golden, Danganropa series, Atelier, Trails series to name a few.

Even with this it still wasn’t enough to salvage the smouldering wreckage unfortunately. It died a true death in 2013 once the PS4 officially released. This in my opinion is the main cause of the failure. It came to late into the PS3 life cycle and was always overshadowed by the incoming PS4 even from a company perspective. They probably should’ve waited and joint released it with the 4, allowing for a slightly better machine and better cross-play capability as well as an extended library from the get go. All this could’ve been avoided if Sony had a better attitude then, Nah fuck it, for the entirety of the Vitas run.

I could go on more about some of the smaller features on the Vita, like the menu shuffling, the AR game it came with, some of the cooler games available on it. Or even the fact that every game now came with trophies like any other normal big title on the home consoles unlike the PSP. But there isn’t much point. It’s a great little machine and deserved to be treated far better and no matter how much I can go on it doesn’t change that Sony fucked it from the get go, but perhaps it can at least allow for a few more people even if a tad late, to enjoy what it has to offer.

I certify the Sony PS Vita a mighty 9/10, Pure Tasty Gaming.

Sony PS Vita 22nd February 2012