The Official PlayStation Vita Thread - 11/4: FW 3.00 Coming Just in Time for the PS4 Launch!

[quote name='FriskyTanuki']All Android games on PlayStation Suite are compatible with the Vita.[/QUOTE]

Right, but how many of them are there? Ten?
 
There is another company that has succeded in a mail in rebate for a type of media, Warner Brothers. Until recently you could mail in your DVD of a certain film (disc only) and get that same film on blu-ray sealed in a case like you would buy on Amazon. Granted they cost $6 bucks or so. Now WB will take ANY DVD, (as long as it is a professional DVD and not a porno) and you can trade the disc for any blu-ray on their list. I doubt Sony would ever consider that option but this proves that a company has gone lengths to help consumers trading up.
 
I ended up pre-ordering both. I don't necessarily want a 3G data plan, but I want the option to activate it if I desire. I just don't know how they're going to make you sign up for a contract, since Amazon already has it up for Pre-order and there's no mention about 3G data plan required...

Also, I think since the 3G technology is GSM, Verizon and Sprint are out of the picture.
 
[quote name='jh6269']Also, I think since the 3G technology is GSM, Verizon and Sprint are out of the picture.[/QUOTE]

Correct...only AT&T and T-Mobile support GSM in the United States, but since GSM is more common around the world than CDMA, it is the right choice if they are only going to make one version of the 3G Vita (and I think it would be silly for them to do two versions at this time).

And assuming the merger goes through, AT&T + T-Mobile will become AT&T&T and there will be nobody else to choose form the U.S.
 
Sony Europe did offered a UMD trade in for PSP Go. However it was just first party games and the selection is pretty limited. I doubt it will matter for most people.
 
So im tempted to get the wifi one as its looks cool
The no UMD things makes me nervous as i dont wanna send $40 on a game with no physical copy.

May buy it for cheap games.
 
[quote name='adriley313']So im tempted to get the wifi one as its looks cool
The no UMD things makes me nervous as i dont wanna send $40 on a game with no physical copy.

May buy it for cheap games.[/QUOTE]

You will have a physical copy. They are going to have a proprietary flash format card that even has extra space for game saves and DLC. They'll also have expandable storage a la MS Pro Duo, SDHC or something along those lines.
 
I could see Sony taking in UMD games and issuing their digital counterparts via e-mail (codes). If the user pays shipping (media mail is cheap) it should be a reasonable option.
 
It would be a big selling point for me if they did some kind of UMD trade in, I mean a big big selling point. The thought of having all my UMD games on one system available to play without carrying anything around and without paying anything extra besides maybe shipping costs and the cost of the system is quite appealing right now. I am sure this would be a big selling point for many buyers of the system.

The only problem is having enough memory for all those games, I have no idea how much memory this system will come with though so I really can't comment on that right now.

I can see them easily doing this for games that are on the PSN but what about non-PSN games? I mean for PSN games you could just mail the disc in and get a voucher which is easy. But for non-PSN games it gets a little tricky. It does sound like Sony is on board with the idea of transferring your UMD's so that is a plus.

I guess I should probably go out and buy a few more UMD games before prices spike.... as UMD's are pretty cheap right now.
 
It would be a big selling point for me if they did some kind of UMD trade in, I mean a big big selling point. The thought of having all my UMD games on one system available to play without carrying anything around and without paying anything extra besides maybe shipping costs and the cost of the system is quite appealing right now. I am sure this would be a big selling point for many buyers of the system.

The only problem is having enough memory for all those games, I have no idea how much memory this system will come with though so I really can't comment on that right now.

I can see them easily doing this for games that are on the PSN but what about non-PSN games? I mean for PSN games you could just mail the disc in and get a voucher which is easy. But for non-PSN games it gets a little tricky. It does sound like Sony is on board with the idea of transferring your UMD's so that is a plus.

I guess I should probably go out and buy a few more UMD games before prices spike.... as UMD's are pretty cheap right now.
 
[quote name='elessar123']I'd prefer it if they let you trade in UMDs for the new carts. Oh please, please, please, Sony.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, if they let you trade in UMDs for carts complete with cases and instruction books I'd be all over it. Never happen in a million years though. I'm not really interested in trading UMDs for codes though, if I wanted the DD version I would have bought it.
 
Can you change the shipping address on an Amazon preorder? I want to put in a Wifi preorder now, but I'll be living somewhere else come August.
 
[quote name='Rocko']Can you change the shipping address on an Amazon preorder? I want to put in a Wifi preorder now, but I'll be living somewhere else come August.[/QUOTE]

Add a different address to account before placing the preorder, then at the final check out screen, you will be able to chose the address you want to ship to.
 
[quote name='Rocko']Can you change the shipping address on an Amazon preorder? I want to put in a Wifi preorder now, but I'll be living somewhere else come August.[/QUOTE]

Yes. Change address is listed as an option on the orders page.
 
[quote name='Poor2More']Add a different address to account before placing the preorder, then at the final check out screen, you will be able to chose the address you want to ship to.[/QUOTE]
I meant after the order is placed, but thanks for the tip.
[quote name='mwynn']Yes. Change address is listed as an option on the orders page.[/QUOTE]
Thanks. I'll go ahead and place the order, then. :3

$50 doesn't seem like too much more for 3G, but owning a smartphone makes me think that having 3G on this thing would be kind of pointless.
 
ive already pre-ordered the 3g/Wifi from Amazon
$50 is a ok price to pay for playing games online with my friends

I just wanna know what kinda plan its gonna be
thats why im buying from Amazon
 
[quote name='adriley313']ive already pre-ordered the 3g/Wifi from Amazon
$50 is a ok price to pay for playing games online with my friends

I just wanna know what kinda plan its gonna be
thats why im buying from Amazon[/QUOTE]

You can't use the 3G for gaming.
 
[quote name='adriley313']^then what is the 3g for?
if its not for gaming then why would you pay $20 a month?
For internet of downloading[/QUOTE]

Yep.
 
Yess! I would have definitely buy it with 3G/WiFi this late winter. I hope I get more trophies on PS3 vita which related to my PSN account. :)
 
well that sucks
Can you buy the 3G and not get a plan?
May just do that so if i want a plan in the future like some super deal then ill get it.

We will see. Wish they had another color besides black
 
I'd ASSUME you can get one with the cell connection without a plan, probably similar to the iPad, but who knows.

I don't know...I can't even justify spending that on a phone plan, and this I'd have even less use for, since most of the time when I'm using it, I'll just be playing games on it.
 
What people were reporting was that you can download games and browse the web with 3G, and play online only with wifi. And as far as I know, it's not limited to ad hoc multiplayer.
 
I think with 3G you'd be able to play something like Hot Shots Golf online, where very little data is sent, and doesn't need to be sent immediately and consistently.
 
Oh wow, I hadn't heard of that Dragon's Crown-it's the new Vanillaware game!

It's also their first (we presume) current gen game, right? Dang, that's close to being a must buy for me, my second so far along with Uncharted.

These suckers are LAUNCH games?!? Geez, I hate the sealed battery, but Vita's almost a sure thing for me.
 
[quote name='Wolfpup']Oh wow, I hadn't heard of that Dragon's Crown-it's the new Vanillaware game!

It's also their first (we presume) current gen game, right? Dang, that's close to being a must buy for me, my second so far along with Uncharted.

These suckers are LAUNCH games?!? Geez, I hate the sealed battery, but Vita's almost a sure thing for me.[/QUOTE]

I'm waiting for the bottom to drop out. I think Sony has done every major thing right with this handheld.

Big, beautiful high res screen; dual analog sticks; touch input (and rear!); price ($250 was lowest we could have expected and majorly competitive). My only gripe is the proprietary memory format so far. Integrated battery will only bug me if battery life is very poor.

BTW, this isn't listed as a launch game by amazon's release date. Having uncharted as the only launch title I care about isn't that big of a deal given that all PSP games on the store will be supported and I barely played any before I sold my psp.
 
Yeah, I just noticed it's March or something.

Still, that's awesome there's already another game I'm genuinely excited about, and the thing doesn't even launch for half a year!
 
Geez...I don't understand why more people weren't blown away by the PSP, and I'm having that same excitement again now.

I mean when I saw Twisted Metal running on a PSP for the first time? My jaw was just about on the floor, and so were all the other people at the Best Buy display-it was right up front, and there must have always been 6 people around it (all adults) just kind of dumbfounded by it, and all of us just walking out with a stack of games.

Vita doesn't seem to be as powerful against the current gen systems...well, sort of...actually maybe that's not fair because the PSP isn't as good as the Gamecube or Xbox, so maybe this is similar against the generation as a whole.

Anyway, the idea that this is going to have multiplatform titles THIS FALL, at the same time as the current gen systems are still the current gen systems...only you can play them ANYWHERE?!?

Seriously...that is awesome.
 
As someone who didn't give a shit about the NGP because I figured it was going to be $400 so I didn't even want to pretend to be excited since I thought I couldn't afford it... I'm really excited now. And I'm getting one day one. It just looks so powerful, the games will be ridiculous.
 
They're posting E3 interviews and demos up on the PlayStation Blog, so I'll post those as they're put up with interesting info.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/06/15/e3-replay-littlebigplanet-for-ps-vita/

LBP for PS Vita has an all-new campaign and is compatible with all DLC costumes from the console versions. The level creator even gives access to the accelerometer and touch screen, so it's kind of a simplified dev kit that lets you make own games or play what others have made. They also mention that it'll support four-player co-op and lbp.me.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/06/15/modnation-racers-ps-vita-modding-with-your-fingertips-2/

ModNation Racers makes great use of touch screen to let you draw the course out in seconds before going in closer to tweak it and add details. It's compatible with all user-made courses, karts, and mods from the PS3 version.

GameSpot's E3 Stage Demo for Uncharted: Golden Abyss:

http://www.gamespot.com/video/0/6318314/videoplayerpop?rgroup=e32008_live

GameSpot's ModNation Racers Stage Demo:

http://www.gamespot.com/video/0/6319607/videoplayerpop?rgroup=e32008_live

Hot Shots Golf gameplay for PS Vita:

http://www.gamespot.com/video/0/6318533/videoplayerpop?rgroup=e32008_live

GameSpot's Booth Tour of some of the Vita games:

http://www.gamespot.com/video/0/6318185/videoplayerpop?rgroup=e32008_live
http://www.gamespot.com/video/0/6318181/videoplayerpop?rgroup=e32008_live
 
That first booth tour video has Little Deviants and Wipeout 2048. They mentioned for Wipeout that they've made tracks a little wider to be easier for new players and it uses the mic so you can tell it what weapons you want to switch to.

The second video has the new Blazblue game, Dynasty Warriors, Virtua Tennis 4, and LBP. They didn't get too much info. Blazblue might have cross-platform play, though they couldn't say anything yet. Dynasty Warriors uses the back touchpad for special attacks where you just tap the back touchpad like mad to attack enemies like a crazy person. Virtua Tennis lets you swipe to swing your racket, touch with either the top or bottom pad for menu navigation, and there's a cool same-screen MP mode.

Wipeout 2048 is a launch window title, Virtua Tennis 4 is a launch title, and LBP is 2012.
 
[quote name='Wolfpup']Geez...I don't understand why more people weren't blown away by the PSP, and I'm having that same excitement again now.

I mean when I saw Twisted Metal running on a PSP for the first time? My jaw was just about on the floor, and so were all the other people at the Best Buy display-it was right up front, and there must have always been 6 people around it (all adults) just kind of dumbfounded by it, and all of us just walking out with a stack of games.

Vita doesn't seem to be as powerful against the current gen systems...well, sort of...actually maybe that's not fair because the PSP isn't as good as the Gamecube or Xbox, so maybe this is similar against the generation as a whole.

Anyway, the idea that this is going to have multiplatform titles THIS FALL, at the same time as the current gen systems are still the current gen systems...only you can play them ANYWHERE?!?

Seriously...that is awesome.[/QUOTE]

The Vita's GPU is no question more powerful than the most powerful of last gen's, the Xbox. It has roughly 4x the pixel fill rate and geometry performance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NV2A#Technical_specifications
http://www.imgtec.com/news/release/index.asp?newsid=449

At 200MHz core frequency an SGX543MP4 (four cores) will deliver 133 million polygons per second and fill rates in excess of 4Gpixels/sec**.
Click to expand...
By extension, this makes it more powerful than the Wii GPU, which was a 50% overclock of the gamecube GPU.

Subjectively, I'd place the visuals of the uncharted game somewhere around the resistance title that launched with the ps3, which kind of had muddied textures and bland visuals to me.
 
 
http://ie.psp.ign.com/articles/117/1177042p1.html

IGN has a good interview with Shuhei Yoshida about Vita and he even confirms that they're not selling it at a loss:
IGN: On the PlayStation Vita, it seemed like many were surprised by the name. What are your thoughts on that and were there other names you were considering?

Yoshida: With anything the name is a big deal. There are many people involved pitching ideas. Vita was actually one of the code names for the project. We started this in 2008 and called it NGP actually, that was the very first codename. At one point the hardware guys proposed to call it Project Vita. Vita means "life" and one of the central concepts they were proposing was to bring entertainment to every aspect of a person's life. We wanted people to carry around PSVita where you'll be close to the PlayStation experience everywhere you go.

After a couple years using the Vita name, it sunk into our minds. When we announced the device in January we hadn't decided, but the majority of us thought the Vita name made sense.

IGN: How much concern is there with dropping the PSP name?
No one had predicted that a $500 dollar device with a large screen would sell like crazy before the iPad came out.

Yoshida: When we said NGP, many people called it PSP 2. And when we said PlayStation Vita then people called it NGP. So I think after a few months people will get used to it.

IGN: Most everyone was surprised by the $249.99 price announcement, including a lot of third-party publishers. How important was it for Sony to get to that point and will the company make a profit on the console sold out of the gate?

Yoshida: At the very start of this project a bunch of us core members went to Japan and spent a day discussing what it is that we wanted to achieve with the new PlayStation portable device. One of the goals was to hit the right price point, which was actually $250. So at the very beginning we agreed that we're going to hit $250. But during that time we were still recovering from the difficultly we had with the high cost of goods with PlayStation 3 where the company lost a lot of money. We asked consumers to spend a lot of money to purchase what, at that time, was bleeding-edge technology. That was great from a technical standpoint but the technology has to mature enough so that a reasonable price can be put on the performance.

For Vita, the price on performance was something we definitely wanted to hit, although we all agreed because we are PlayStation, people expect better graphics and prettier pictures, so we have all those things we wanted to achieve in terms of capabilities, but we capped our ambitions with a cost of goods target that we can profitably sell the hardware for $250.

To answer your question, we set out a goal: Yes, we're going to hit the $250 price, and no, we don't want to sell the hardware with a deficit. That's a goal we set out to do and I'm very happy we are achieving that.

IGN: So you're going to be profitable with each Vita sold?

Yoshida: We haven't completed the hardware development. It's like 98-percent done in terms of hardware, and on the system software side and network code, we have a few more months to work on that. We don't have the final-final answer to that question, but the way we are projecting it seems like we're going to do pretty well.

IGN: The Nintendo 3DS launched at $250, and sales for that appear to be slower than most expected. Many say it's because there's a lack of good software. But are you concerned that maybe $250 for a dedicated gaming device might still be too much?

The development cost for one of our studio titles on Vita is way closer to what we've been spending on developing PSP games.

Yoshida: It's relative to what the value of the product is offering. No one had predicted that a $500 device with a large screen would sell like crazy before the iPad came out. Really, it matters what it is that the product enables people to do. And of course what games you can play is one part and we like to see people excited for our games at launch.

IGN: How have third-party developers been reacting to being able to create high quality games on a portable like this? A game like Uncharted: Golden Abyss obviously costs way more to develop than most iPhone games. Have you noticed a trend of developers wanting to do big-budget handheld games?

Yoshida: Last year, when the company started evangelizing NGP, I joined many of these meetings with third-parties because one of our studios was integral in hardware development and we had prototypes of the games already working, like Uncharted and Little Deviants, to help explain why some of the components are in Vita. When you just say this device has a back touch panel, people may say, "Well, we don't need it." But when you let them try Little Deviants, they say, "Oh, ok, that makes sense."

I am there in many meetings with third-party developers and publishers, and because one of our studios is no different than them in terms of being game developers, a lot of questions we asked on the input we had made in determining the features of PSVita, they quickly understood. They agreed this is the right level of technology they would be able to put their games on.

It's not making a next-generation game on home consoles where you have to spend $100 million. Actually, the development cost for one of our studio titles on Vita is way closer to what we've been spending on developing PSP games than what we've been spending on PlayStation 3.
Click to expand...

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/06/17/e3-replay-scott-rohde-answers-your-ps-vita-questions/

Another E3 Replay interview on the PS Blog, which has Scott Rohde talking about PS Vita. He mentions the PSP BC and how it'll be able to allow games that should make use of the right stick to actually use it along with every game getting graphical upgrades (smoothing and such).
 
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I wonder if it's true that it was going to have 1GB or 512MB, and it got cut for cost?

At any rate, I think the Vita is a good example that you can do a powerful system that's a generational leap forward, and still do it so you're not losing money...I mean if they're no longer willing to do that, Vita is proof that doesn't mean our generational leaps have to end, which is good news!

Really Nintendo may have been breaking even on the Gamecube? I don't know...but that might be another example....although they may have been losing money on it, dont' know.
 
All the discussion around the system specs getting reduced seems strange. It would seem that a decision like that would have to occur before the dev kits went out.
 
My guess if it got cut, it was from 512 MB to 256 MB. 1GB is very unlikely given that this thing won't need to multi-task and takes calls like a smartphone would.
 
Yeah, 1GB was just a rumor floating out there. Seemed crazy at first, but then I'm like "well, the high end Android stuff has 1GB now..."

I wonder...Next Generation used to say you could get by with 1/2 (or maybe 1/4? I think they said 1/2) the RAM if you're using cartridges. Wonder if that's true, and if what Vita is using works for that.

I mean potentially it can load stuff faster than the disc drives on the other two consoles....although they have hard drives (well, Xbox games can't rely on it being there for sure). Hmm.

I mean Bioshock Infinite is supposed to be on it, right?!? How is that going to look? I mean...can it really do a version that at a glance you can't tell apart-or maybe is really hard to tell apart? Or will stuff look bad by comparison? (Of course launch games don't necessarily tell much.)

And then it's got FOUR GPUs...which supposedly scale well, but...
 
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