The Playstation Vita Catch-All

cube wrote:

Not sure why people are bagging on Sony for this. It's the exact same deal with the current PSP.

Yes and no. I play all of my PSP games off of memory stick and I would swear I get more than 5 hours. Even so I already own a PSP with tons of games. So to me this just says I should stick with the PSP longer. Same battery life and no games that I absolutely know I want to play on day 1.

DSGamer wrote:
cube wrote:

Not sure why people are bagging on Sony for this. It's the exact same deal with the current PSP.

Yes and no. I play all of my PSP games off of memory stick and I would swear I get more than 5 hours. Even so I already own a PSP with tons of games. So to me this just says I should stick with the PSP longer. Same battery life and no games that I absolutely know I want to play on day 1.

Which PSP do you have?

Ulairi wrote:
DSGamer wrote:
cube wrote:

Not sure why people are bagging on Sony for this. It's the exact same deal with the current PSP.

Yes and no. I play all of my PSP games off of memory stick and I would swear I get more than 5 hours. Even so I already own a PSP with tons of games. So to me this just says I should stick with the PSP longer. Same battery life and no games that I absolutely know I want to play on day 1.

Which PSP do you have?

The PSP 3000.

3-5 hours is about the same as the PSP now, if you're using the UMD. I guess it's a step down since Vita doesn't have UMD but I'm not really bothered by it.

3DS battery isn't any better, right?

I just hope the Vita is better in sleep mode than the 3DS (which uses battery like crazy I gather).

Mr GT Chris wrote:

I just hope the Vita is better in sleep mode than the 3DS (which uses battery like crazy I gather).

Does the 3DS ever really go to sleep? It's constantly trying to do things with Street Pass, no?

DSGamer wrote:
Mr GT Chris wrote:

I just hope the Vita is better in sleep mode than the 3DS (which uses battery like crazy I gather).

Does the 3DS ever really go to sleep? It's constantly trying to do things with Street Pass, no?

If you turn the wireless off, Street Pass is disabled. Supposedly this improves battery life in sleep mode, but I haven't tried it.

I thought it was impossible to completely disable wireless on the 3DS? Or, at least, that's something I remember hearing early on.

Mr GT Chris wrote:

I thought it was impossible to completely disable wireless on the 3DS? Or, at least, that's something I remember hearing early on.

There's a switch on the side that's supposed to entirely turn off both wireless internet and Street Pass. Again, I don't know if it actually does.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

There's a switch on the side that's supposed to entirely turn off both wireless internet and Street Pass. Again, I don't know if it actually does.

I remember the discussion was something like, Nintendo could always monitor and remotely update the content of your 3DS (firmware etc. and if wifi is available), and there was no way to disable this regardless of the wireless toggle setting.

So it anyone considering importing?

Nah :). But seriously, I'm currently wondering how long I can hold off. I'd prefer to get a Vita-2000 if possible.

Not for the short amount of extra time it would get me. I also want to use the time between releases to figure out how large a memory stick I need to buy.

I am looking forward to this release and will purchase one if Sony provides a reliable way for me to use my existing PSP UMD library without additional cost. Otherwise I'll just still to my PSP-1000.

Changed the thread title.

Storage info maybe not so great. Boy howdy are those memory cards pricey.

Yeah, this has me on the verge of cancelling my pre-order. If not many games turn out to need a memory card, then I'll probably buy. If they all need one, I'll wait for the system price to drop.

It's typical Sony thinking, force you into something proprietary and then soak you.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Yeah, this has me on the verge of cancelling my pre-order. If not many games turn out to need a memory card, then I'll probably buy. If they all need one, I'll wait for the system price to drop.

My big issue with this is that most of what I was going to play already were games out of the 32Gb of Memory Stick Pro I already purchased to put in my PSP. Having to pay for that memory again just to play PSP games for which I already have a system is hard to stomach.

I was planning to wait for the first revision of the system anyway (just because I don't want to buy the Vita twice). So hopefully the memory prices will come down by then. Pro Duo memory was pretty expensive to start with too.

Kinda surprising since they already have a Sony proprietary flash memory format. They really need another? Good way to alienate loyal customers.

Stele wrote:

Kinda surprising since they already have a Sony proprietary flash memory format. They really need another? Good way to alienate loyal customers.

Hey, it wouldn't be a modern Sony product without a proprietary format of some kind.

It's kind of the give you the razor and sell the razordblades model except that they make you pay out the nose for the part that attaches the razorblades to the razor.

I agree the PS Vita memory card pricing is ridiculous and the last thing Sony needs to do but I also find it hilarious that many of the people in the gaming press railing against it are people who paid $100 more to get an extra 16GB of memory in their iOS device. It's the exact same thing except the gouging is even greater. At least in the PS Vita's case, eventually third parties will start making memory cards and drive the prices down. There is no good reason for Sony to not just use SD cards. I can understand that in order for them to work correctly, a certain quality of memory and speed is required but SD cards are all clearly marked with their speed class on them and simply saying "requires Class 4 for optimal performance" would be more than sufficient.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

I agree the PS Vita memory card pricing is ridiculous and the last thing Sony needs to do but I also find it hilarious that many of the people in the gaming press railing against it are people who paid $100 more to get an extra 16GB of memory in their iOS device. It's the exact same thing except the gouging is even greater.

Some of them paid $100 for an extra 8GB of memory, so yeah...

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

There is no good reason for Sony to not just use SD cards.

I agree. I have to wonder how much R&D went into the new format, and whether or not the continual battle against piracy is involved or if it's just Sony being, well, Sony.

I can see with the amount of hacking and what not that went on with the original PSP, why they would want to have a proprietary memory type, but pricing it above and beyond normal memory will just force people to not buy the product, or wait for the inevitable 3rd party adapters. To me the smart thing to do, would be to have the new memory format, but price it below standard formats, or at least equal to it. Make it cheap enough and the majority of people will not even bother with the different types, taking piracy off the table for those users.

Yoreel wrote:

I can see with the amount of hacking and what not that went on with the original PSP, why they would want to have a proprietary memory type, but pricing it above and beyond normal memory will just force people to not buy the product, or wait for the inevitable 3rd party adapters. To me the smart thing to do, would be to have the new memory format, but price it below standard formats, or at least equal to it. Make it cheap enough and the majority of people will not even bother with the different types, taking piracy off the table for those users.

Not just this, but if there is no BC plans for UMDs it will get hacked anyway.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

I can understand that in order for them to work correctly, a certain quality of memory and speed is required but SD cards are all clearly marked with their speed class on them and simply saying "requires Class 4 for optimal performance" would be more than sufficient.

The rated speeds are for contiguous transfers, which have almost no relation to randomized transfer speeds. This is exactly why I went through 3 different microSD cards before I found one that would work reliably in a Samsung Focus, where the add-on card and internal memory are addressed as if they were the same bank of memory.

Still, cancelled my preorder.

Me too, after thinking about it I'm just not seeing the preorder incentive here. No bonuses for preordering, plus this news about the insanely expensive memory cards, and no idea yet if it'll be hackable. It'll be a while before Sony gets a new revision out, so I figure waiting until the facts surface is a good idea.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Me too, after thinking about it I'm just not seeing the preorder incentive here. No bonuses for preordering, plus this news about the insanely expensive memory cards, and no idea yet if it'll be hackable. It'll be a while before Sony gets a new revision out, so I figure waiting until the facts surface is a good idea.

Yep. I actually picked up a second PSP instead. I fear that if they end production I'll be bummed if I don't have something on which to play the 20+ games I bought off of PSN. I was hoping that system was going to be the Vita, but I just don't trust that yet.

I expected the word about the memory cards to cool anticipation a bit, but wow, it's really dampened people's enthusiasm.

Also, it's interesting to see so many comments about waiting for a price drop when the universal chorus after E3 was that $250 was just the best price point ever. "Sex in the streets," was the term, I think.