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PS Vita Specs Announced
An anonymous reader writes "Sony has announced the hardware specs for the PS Vita and the details have confirmed most fans' hopes instead of their fears. The heart of the system is an ARM-developed Cortex A9 chip with four cores and a PowerVR SGX GPU. The screen is a 5-inch OLED capacitive touch-screen (with multi-touch) and a resolution of 960 x 544. The system will include 512MB of RAM and an additional 128MB of discrete VRAM. There will be front and rear cameras capable of 60fps at VGA resolution (640 x 480)."
I must admit on some level I was beginning to grow tired of just how ubiquitous devices that will record in 720p were becoming.
Forgive my ignorance, but does anyone know why so little RAM?
probably the most important spec. for me
But will it be fun? Hardware specs mean nothing if there aren't any good games for it. Hopefully Sony learns from Nintendo's mistake and actually has a decent library of games. Still waiting on a non-remake or original DS game to play on my 3DS I got as a gift back in June...
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
What android phones or iphone have actual joysticks? I must have missed those. And which ones have quad cores and the highest-end PowerVR GPU? And 5-inch OLED screen? This is a portable game console, not a phone that can do lightweight gaming. There IS a place for dedicated hardware, even if you personally don't need or want it.
How about the MOPS? http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/14/mops-shadow-t800-brings-analog-joystick-hearts-and-spades-to-andr/ That has an analog joystick.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I don't think iPhone and Android will do better in the games department. These gaming suited handhelds are designed for people with better attention spans than a goldfish.
Hey, what do you mean by better attention span - Look, a squirrel!
"806MHz processor, 512MB of RAM, front and rear 5 megapixel and 0.3 megapixel cameras, respectively, a 3.5 inch 320 x 480 touchscreen"
Whoo, impressive specs. Yes, that will definitely destroy the PS Vita in the market.
Shush, heathen! Look at the flashy pictures!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The raw RAM number hardly matters as much as how it is applied in a phone. If Android has been filled with bloatware requiring you to root the phone to get rid of it, then a gig of RAM won't do much good. If it's efficient, half that can run games quite well. Also, look at the actual RAM of some gaming systems and you'll be surprised at how little it takes.
It's the OS
I have a motorola droid pro and my old iPhone 3GS I sold months ago was faster with 1/3 the ram
Maybe if the phone manufacturers didn't set up all kinds of useless programs to run in the background they would work better with less ram
Let me know when you can buy an IOS or Android device as capable as a Vita or 3DS for the same prices, with no monthly contract.
I remember the days when gamers lusted for a 50 MHz processor and 16 MB of RAM. (Cameras. Ha! Touchscreen. Giggle! Dual analog sticks? Only if you had a joystick in each hand.)
What really matters is how much fun the game is. And here's the crazy part: different people have different definitions of fun. So the vast majority are just going to yawn at Sony's new gizmo and go back to gaming on their phone.
(Granted, from my limited experience with games on the cell phone, they do suck. But that has more to do with developers wanting to make cheap games for an audience that'll pay a buck or two for anything.)
This means that the life of your Vita will be equal to the life (as in: able to hold a reasonable charge) of your internal battery. I'm on my 3rd battery for my June 2005 PSP-1000, so this is not without precedent. I'm sure you'll be able to find specialist stores that will put in a new battery for you, but this won't be cheap.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Some people will be fine with cellphone games, but some games just don't play well with a touchscreen interface. That's fine - not every product has to appeal to everyone. As long as Sony can keep the price down and attract good games, it shouldn't be a problem for them. I am disappointed that they went with a proprietary memory card (again), and LTE would have been very nice, assuming they could have done it without killing battery life (which they probably couldn't with the current generation of LTE chips).
Probably "nothing" to do with background processes or RAM and more to do with the Dalvik VM and its Garbage Collector, and Android's lack of _full_ hardware-accelerated UI framework. ;)
They're gonna be taking a loss at the announced price, and I suspect they'll end up with a quick 3DS-like cut and hurt themselves even more.
Here's hoping it works out for them, though. I'd hate to see interesting long-form handheld games disappear in the vortex that is Apple's destruction of that particular market.
Someone would eat the pandora's lunch. I can already hear those people that are still in line for the first batch stampeding to the vita, once it's jail broken there will be no need for the pandora.
"They haven't learned one PS3 lesson"
Hilarious!
Sony's PS3 is the 3rd fastest selling console in history - only the PS2 and Wii sold at a faster rate. The PS3 has outsold the PS3 the Xbox 360 every year it has been on the market while being 100-200 dollars more expensive.
And all this was while the PS3 was still the launch price of the PS2.
Take the fanboy goggles off and come join reality with the rest of us.
What is sony? It sounds like a curse word.
Maybe even the turn of the year. I am not optimistic, I just don't see the point of a standalone portable gaming device when we have phones that are running the Unreal 3 engine and Tegra 3 is boasting 5x the processing power of those devices. They need to stop wasting their time developing hardware and start using more of the computing devices we all have in our pockets already.
Actually, they say it'll support 3G and voice chat. And you know what that means: SIDETALKIN', the feature all other phones envy!
Basically, while Android and iOS won't necessarily disappear from the games market over night, it's lights out for them as serious competitors in the phone arena.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Really? They all have two analog sticks?
Do this.
Release the jailbreak yourself. Better yet, make a Linux distro and dev package for it. Bonus points if you make an X server for the graphics chip.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Specs came out in January and have been on Wikipedia for over 7 months now
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Apple, HTC, Samsung and Googlerola have announced every single phone they sell in 2012 year either matches or exceed every single one of these specs.
1) Except for analog sticks, d-pads, and shoulder buttons. Controls is a spec too. My cellphone can be used as a remote control for my TV too... and its got way higher specs than my universal remote to boot... but nobody is predicting the end of remote's. The remote does the job perfectly ... because its a convenient shape, with tactile buttons that are arranged usefully. Cell phones utterly suck at it, with awkward controls.
2) I'm not buying my 7 and 9 year olds cell phones. But a portable console? Yeah, that could happen.
Phones and mobile games are definitely going to eat handheld consoles market share in a major way in the segments they overlap, but that overlap is not complete.
What android phones or iphone have actual joysticks? I must have missed those. And which ones have quad cores and the highest-end PowerVR GPU? And 5-inch OLED screen? This is a portable game console, not a phone that can do lightweight gaming. There IS a place for dedicated hardware, even if you personally don't need or want it.
There problem is not so much competing on specs with multipurpose hardware; but whether the much larger installed bases of A)expensive smartphones that people already have, linked to impulse-buy download stores and B)cheap handheld consoles like their own now-reasonably-priced PSP and anything Nintendo that isn't a 3DS will cause their game libraries to suffer...
It is hard to deny that this device will be a technologically superior mobile gaming device; but it is much less clear that it will achieve the critical mass needed to get a good library of titles: The techheads(and, with iPhones, also the suits and the soccer moms) already have an inferior; but zero-additional-cost-because-they-already-have-it smartphone that is still pretty powerful(those that care about games may well also have a console at home and/or strong opinions on PC gaming). The impecunious and the kiddies probably aren't going to like the Sony price for a 5-inch OLED, highest-end SoC, slabs of RAM, and new-release titles. A fair few members of both will lust after this; but will they drop their smartphones/NDSes/PSPs-with-a-memory-stick-full-of-ISOs and shell out?
So there have been a number of articles about how the 3DS (with an actual 3D screen) is having a hard time competing against the iPhone. Sony's entry? Basically the same specs as an iPhone 4. Yeah the Vita has a faster cpu and hardware buttons, but it also has a lower resolution screen and the games will be more expensive. Needless to say all the rumors point to a new iPhone being released in the next few weeks which would probably close the gap on the cpu. Are hardware controls really going to sell $40 games?
I just don't see the point of a standalone portable gaming device when we have phones that are running the Unreal 3 engine and
Driving games are quite bearable. A few other genres work... some puzzlers... But playing an FPS on a phone sucks donkey balls. And anything that requires more than one or two buttons is unplayable... Scrolling shooters? 2D-fighters? Platformers... Disasters all of them.
All I ever did with my PSP was run emulators on it. Maybe someday I'll get the Vita, when my PSP finally goes tits up and I need a new portable emulation device.
That would be good! Imagine playing Gran Turismo 4, Dark Cloud 2, FFXII, etc while riding in the bus ! :)
nuff said!
The specs are solid and will stay ahead of phones for atleast 6 months more like 12 months and maybe even longer for one particular brand. Also they bring thumb sticks and all the ps titles which are alot better than any app. I would of liked to see a hdmi out though.
Rocket Surgeon.
Dunno about you but I'm excited about the screen but don't care much about the rest. Why are there so few OLED devices out there?
...but still lacking. I'm sad to see they're going with a proprietary memory card for games. I was hoping, at worst, they'd have two memory card slots, one proprietary one for games, and a standard SD or MS slot for expanding memory. Also sad to see video out is gone (PSP had video out at least, and I was hoping for a mini-HDMI connection or possibly wireless HDMI (since the standard is almost complete IIRC)). Oh well... maybe next console generation.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Yeah? How much money did Sony lose while trying to get the PS3 positioned? Remember Ken Kutaragi getting his ass fired for bungling what the entire industry assumed was a surefire launch?
I'm just going to suggest I'm not the "fanboy" wearing "goggles" here, chief.
I personally have no issue with on-screen joysticks but understand that others do.
No one is predicting the end of the remotes because remotes cost between 5 and 10 dollars and their batteries last months. With portable gaming devices, there are no such advantages. Only advantage the japanese handheld has over a phone is removable media game ownership (some may not consider that an advantage but many gamers do, for now) and big japanese studio support.
Tactile controls, as I noted in another reply, may not be a long lasting advantage. Samsung may release a phone next month with analog sticks and offer it as the "definitive gaming android device" and the others may follow suit very very fast. Even if they dont, there are people out there making bluetooth attachments that add these input schemes. Wont be long before some one like MadCatz start offering bluetooth cases with very discrete but tactile inputs. I would expect some to show by the end of 2012.
Finally, I think i would rather give my 9 year old a phone that I only had to pay 200 tops for (subsidized) than a 400 gaming device. With the phone, he can contact me in emergencies and, if properly configured, I can track down his location. But thats me.
The overlap may not be complete, but this thing already ate into the japanese handheld market share (its not going to happen, it already happened.) It has been moving so incredibly fast (in less than 3 years) that I would not be shocked if the only advantage vanished by the end of 2012.
Apparently, "real people" buy a new mobile device every 12-24 months
Are your friends doing that? I've never had to do that with any iPhone. For one thing if you got Applecare and the battery were dead within three years, they'd replace it for free. But in reality battery life has never dropped that much even after two years of solid use on the older phones.
Replaceable batteries are just pointless, since in the same (or possibly better) form factor, I can carry an external battery if I really need more time... which once you take out having get get a new battery because the old one failed, is the only other reason to possibly want a replaceable battery.
And the thing it gives you is significantly better battery life because all the space that would have been taken up with a door mechanism and battery casing can be battery.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Probably "nothing" to do with background processes or RAM and more to do with the Dalvik VM and its Garbage Collector, and Android's lack of _full_ hardware-accelerated UI framework. ;)
I have never owned one, but I've heard that Motorola installs a custom GUI that chokes all their Droid phones.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Even if it does, undoubtedly Sony will take the option away a year or two into its life-cycle.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Sony is dead to me. They could come out with the greatest device ever and I would not give them a thin dime.
Further, anyone over the age of 12 who has a Sony Vita PS will be widely seen as a cunt.
You are welcome on my lawn.
As the others have already replied to your post, gaming stinks on the Android and iPhone platforms. Without physical controls it's not very much fun to game on a touchscreen unless all you do is play sudoku.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
And as a game company, where are you going to put your investment?
Are you going to invest 10+ millions to sell a 50 dollars game to one million gamers, or are you going to invest less than 1 million to sell a 99 cents game to 500 million gamers?
There are many game companies out there that make games because they enjoy great games. They're not out to make a quick buck on some shitty game, they want to make a slow (but often immense) buck on a great game they can be proud of. BioWare, DICE, Infinity Ward, Valve, and countless indie developers meet this criteria. Yes, as a decision out of pure financial interest, it is better to invest a smaller amount of money on a game that will attract many more customers, but 95% of game developers did not get into the industry because of the money. They do it because of the games.
Work with phone manufacturers to produce devices like the Experia Play with actual control buttons. Or work to produce devices that can attach to phone and give them buttons via a bluetooth HID device.
The impecunious and the kiddies probably aren't going to like the Sony price for a 5-inch OLED, highest-end SoC, slabs of RAM, and new-release titles. A fair few members of both will lust after this; but will they drop their smartphones/NDSes/PSPs-with-a-memory-stick-full-of-ISOs and shell out?
MY problem (and I'm sure I'm not alone) with handheld gaming devices is that I just don't have the opportunity to use one. The Vita looks awesome and I'd love to get one, but I don't think I'd use it enough to justify the price. If I had a lot of downtime away from other things maybe I could use it, but here's my life right now: Five days a week I get up at 4 in the morning, drive myself to work, work 8 hours, and drive myself home. When I get home, I'm greeted by a PS3 hooked up to a 42-inch plasma screen in my family room, and a PC (which I have spent a few thousand dollars on over the years) hooked up to a 24-inch LCD display in my bedroom. Why would I want to sit on the couch and play tiny games on a tiny handheld when there's a PS3 in front of me?
If I was able to take the train to work, or if I flew and/or travelled a lot. If I did things where bringing a console or my PC were infeasible, or I had time alone away from home for more than a few minutes during which I did not have to be focused on other things (like driving or working), then a handheld gaming device would probably be worth the investment. But for anybody in my situation, it just isn't.
"Gaming stinks"
I think you mean "some types of gaming stink".
If the iPhone and Android have shown anything it's that there was a hugely underserved portion of the market who were after exactly the sort of games that excel on those platforms.
so instead of buying a portable game console, you'll buy a more expensive phone, then a ton of add ons that will probably cost a lot as well, and never be fully supported by games?
If you are going to lie about something, don't do it about something everyone can see with their own eyes.
This is a handheld console, not a computer or a smartphone. It won't have a bloated general purpose OS taking most of the RAM. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are getting along just fine with less that that amount of RAM.
Mada mada dane.
This thing costs $250 and the 3DS $170, what $400 gaming device are you talking about?
Mada mada dane.
We're already past the middle of 2011 and I don't see any phones with equal specs, let alone better. Even when we have phones with such specs, Vita games will still look better for a generation or two since developers get to have low level access to the hardware, unlike with smartphones.
Mada mada dane.
Agreed. I have a GP2X Wiz with an OLED screen. Emulated games in particular look really nice, especially the old vector based games. They just don't look the same on an LCD.
I'd love to have one of these for retro gaming, mainly for the reason you stated.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Sony's PS3 is the 3rd fastest selling console in history - only the PS2 and Wii sold at a faster rate.. Take the fanboy goggles off and come join reality with the rest of us..
Settle down, he wasn't saying the PS3 wasn't a success, he was saying that the PS3 did not live up to Sony's expectations. Their strategy is to overload the hardware up front and take a loss on it, hoping it'll have a longer life cycle It worked really well for the PS2 and they've struggled with the PS3. It's nothing to take offense to.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The raw RAM number hardly matters as much as how it is applied in a phone. If Android has been filled with bloatware requiring you to root the phone to get rid of it, then a gig of RAM won't do much good. If it's efficient, half that can run games quite well. Also, look at the actual RAM of some gaming systems and you'll be surprised at how little it takes.
While your basicly correct, it seems maybe you don't pay attention to the developers for handheld/console programmers.
In fact, memory is usually why most things get cut, or left out (not talking storage space, i'm talking about keeping different textures in memory, doing AA, etc) because tradionally, consoles/handhelds have had very little memory.
Putting 512m in for a handheld with a decent size screen is more then sweet, it means they can display more stuff, better looking stuff and even apply some AA.
Also means they can have better AI also.
You probably don't care about homebrew, but a bunch of people do, and when your emulating other systems, yes, more ram does help. I'm excited to see what the homebrew community is going to come up with for the Vita (yes, it will be broken).
Of course, your post talks about phones, which, as I understand, this isn't a phone. But your wrong on that phone thing also. It's not really much different.
What you are calling ram, seems to be flash memory, not ram. You know most phones use flash memory to store apps/os and crap in and run it off that, not unlike Palm handhelds of yesteryears. They also have "traditional" ram that they use for running programs, and trust me, it's a lot less then the flash memory in your phone. That "bloatware" is usually just stupid apps that are installed on the phone, that are taking up flash memory space, but not really taking up the running memory (unless of course, they are apps that are actually running on boot up, or you started one up).
But when it comes to programming the game, the dev needs to know how much memory they have to work with (cpu & gpu), so they can plan their textures and other stuff accordingly.
If you have 32mb of memory, you'll have to fit everything in the 32mb, unless you want to do slow ass swapping all the time.
So, 512mb is a big deal, because it gives developers a lot of breathing room to make stuff better.
Also, going to point out because there are a bunch of different phones with different amounts of memory (and cpu's/gpu's), that most devs have to program for the lowest common denominator. So if you put out an Android phone that has 512mb of memory, while most phones have 128mb, games are going to be programmed for the 128mb memory limitation. And if you have a hard time grokking that, then look at how games released on the Xbox 360/PS3/PC are made. That is, made for the consoles and then given a crude port to the PC, even though the PC have way more memory, have better graphics, etc.
Be seeing you...
The PS3 had no games for four years after launch, except MGS4.
The PSP still doesn't have any games.
It's funny because Sony really courted developers in the PSX/PS2 days and let everybody develop for relatively cheap. As a result both systems had enormous software libraries. I don't know why they dropped that strategy for the PS3 and PSP. Wouldn't you want to repeat a working formula?
/quote
This is the worse Troll attempt I have every seen. You new the interwebs?
Be seeing you...
Look! It's another word for "another stupid proprietary cable to put in your back pack when we could have used a micro-USB port and a TRRS head phone jack instead!
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
All that matters to end users is if the games play and look great. You are going to buy this if you want dedicated controls (the differentiation), not by processor specs. Why bother even releasing the specs unless it is just to gloat a little? This Vita looks pretty good for a dedicated device (not something I personally would buy).
That certainly isn't going to help them. I wonder if they are shooting for sales in train-heavier parts of the world?
Yeah but they are making a crucial mistake...the economy is DOA so this is about the WORST time they could possibly be thinking of releasing crazy priced gear! Just look at the HP Tablet, according to most sources with specs a hell of a lot less than this they had a BOM of $318 for the 16Gb. If they can't get this thing at or below the $199 price point then it is gonna just rot on the shelves. look at how the PS3 sales jumped when they hit $250.
You just won't see crazy priced gear sell in this economy, well except if it starts with a lower cased i. If those specs are true unless they sell at a loss (which considering how much money Sony has bled these past two years is doubtful) this thing will sit gathering dust by those inventories of 3DS units. why would you pay crazy money for a games unit when you often see ION based Atom netbooks going for around $250 now? Or have the original PSP or DS for less than $150 bucks?
Personally I wish them luck but I doubt it'll sell. maybe I'll get lucky and score one when it hits $99 like the Touchpad did. i missed out on those dammit. Oh well I got 4 off lease laptops in today to play with and I'll probably pick up one of those cool "portable emulator" game handhelds for when I want to blow something up. I hear the dingoo is quite nice.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
your not the only one. once the system gets rooted i can see it becoming the favorite of the home brew scene killing off other home-brew projects like how the first rooting of the ps3 almost completely killed off the psp home-brew scene.
Like what? Anything that can be done on a touchscreen can be done with a mouse.
Playing a game on the train, or bus, especially while standing up.
Playing a game for a few minutes while waiting in a queue.
Playing a virtual piano keyboard, or other multitouch input where the screen being right underneath works better than a trackpad.
since vita can also be a ps3 controller, if you buy it and already have a ps3, you just made the Wii U obsolete. who will buy a Wii U when vita can do similar graphics and yet is entirely portable? i'm not paying 250 dollars for a vita though...after seeing how crappy their d-pad on psp was which made diagonals nearly impossible, and a lackluster "analog" slide pad, i don't want to risk paying such a price for a portable device only to be stuck with crappy controls.
I am not going to wave a mouse around while standing on a train. That just looks silly.
When have you heard the major game companies ever think about the sub culture a game creates, or even car how happy the user is? It's all about number of units sold, "2 million sold in first week" is all they care about. They majors can manufacture their market through promotion, indies cannot.
Small companies may care, but they are they are not the ones spending £20m+ developing a long playing game for the Vita, the small companies are making the casual games that sell for 99p for Android/iOS.
This is essentially the same hardware as the iPad 2, but a bit better.
Then your previous statement is blatantly false; iPhones will not exceed all specs of the Vita if they don't have analog sticks.
...will it have some kind of "PSN required" function to play "offline" and single-player games? Will it silently snoop on my usage habits and report those habits to Sony and "partners"? Which firmware-encoded software functions will they later remove in the name of security?
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Officially at least.
Why would any console maker in their right mind include it? People simply didn't use it on the PS3 (I'd be amazed if it got 0.1% of users using it regularly). Then you got people using it as a method of hacking into the PS3, forcing their hand to remove it. People then used it as (frankly stupid) justification hacking the PS3 to play pirated games and hack the PS3 servers.
No mainstream console maker will ever include Linux or an ability to unsigned low level code again thanks to these people. Sony did more than anyone had done to make their console more open and look what it got them.
...as in, it'll be interesting to see how Sony manage to royally fuck up this time. Maybe the games will "expire" to make you re-buy them every so often?
But how much is that $200 cellphone costing you over the lifespan of that 2 year contract?
But isn't the market comprised of people looking to kill a few minutes here and there? So you end up with simple games of throwing bombs or something. A very different market to the more "hardcore" one where games take hours to complete.
Also, a touchscreen isn't a panacea of gaming. I have little interest in covering a third of my screen with my thumb or finger every time I want to do something. Would have somewhat taken from the experience, I'd reckon.
Oh I agree, but my point was to address the blanket statement that "gaming stinks" on touchscreen devices, when it clearly has a huge and ever-growing market of games that just weren't being adequately served by more "pure" gaming platforms - perhaps the DS was just about getting there, but the games were still expensive.
As a tangential point, that puts the PS Vitalite (ooooh, ooooh Vitalite!) in a slightly different demographic to the iPhone and iPod Touch, but certainly with some overlap.
I have a PSP, and i love the thing to bits. Compared to my DS, the psp actually has some worthwhile games and stuff. Then in the meantime, Sony did the whole otherOS thing, and the PSN hack happened, and i am very adamant that sony wont receive any money from me, ever again.
Which is a shame for them, by now the PS3 is in a price bracket where i would gladly buy it, if only to scratch my recurring "i want some new hardware" itch. The PSV (i refuse to call it a the vita for now) looks cool too, but their business practices means i dont want to deal with sony.
People, what a bunch of bastards
iPhone 4 use the Cortex-A8, one generation behind the Cortex-A9. The GPU in Vita is SGX543, one generation ahead of iPhone 4's SGX535. Not particularly surprising since the iPhone 4 is about 1 and half year old. Incidentally, these are the cores that the Apple A5 uses, that sits in the iPad 2. Grantend, the CPU and GPU in Vita is quad core, and the iPad 2 is only dual core, but it's still the same generation. Give Apple a month or two to bring the iPhone 5 and the iPhone will be of the same generation as the Vita, and it will ship worldwide, at least a quarter or more before the Vita. Any questions?
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
Balance, my friend. An iPhone with better graphic power, 1 full gig of ram, perhaps, and 960x640 with just touch input will be considered by many (perhaps most, Epic Games, EA and Carmack included) to exceed the vita listed specs.
Given I will need the cellphone contract anyways, a better question is how much I save by using what I'd call a gaming device to make my phone calls. :)
Gaming on touchscreen phones doesn't suck. It has it's strong points and uses. But I see it as a different market. It's the '5 minute time waster' market that was already growing on the PC the past few years with various web based Java/JS games.
I wonder how it all will play out. Will dedicated devices have room to coexist, or will developers start making "feature" games for the phones from looking at the hype and growth, and will people spend $20 or $30 on a 30 hour RPG for a cell phone and kill off dedicated devices?
One big advantage that dedicated devices have is that publishers know the hardware, whereas they might be making a game that's played on a whole gamut of resolutions, screen sizes, system resources, etc. Unpredictable environments like that would raise their cost for testing, more code, and more customer support.
So sure, you sell twice as many games for the phone, but you also increase your costs.
There should be some kind of law that your camera's resolution has to be at least as good as your screen resolution. Any pictures, taken with this thing, won't be displayed at native resolution.
The name should be POS Vita.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
The device is useless without at least 2 or 3 of those premium priced games that are so highly priced because they must be distributed to stores, where the store and every single distributor in between the studio and you wants a large cut of the sale.
Also, decent phones start at $50 today, ponder how things will be there by the end of 2012.
One big advantage that dedicated devices have is that publishers know the hardware, whereas they might be making a game that's played on a whole gamut of resolutions, screen sizes, system resources, etc. Unpredictable environments like that would raise their cost for testing, more code, and more customer support.
Thats something that keeps iOS in a competitive spot and why so many big name developers back up that platform. For the most part, its just one spec with very few differences from previous generations. Android phones can suffer the issues you mention, but are more likely to get built in joysticks in the near future.
They didn't want the Vita competing with the PS3, thus no HDMI out.
If you can't even spell "you're" properly why are you writing so much useless text?
No one who cares about specs is going to do serious coming on a touchscreen.
Tell that to John Carmack
http://www.intomobile.com/2008/08/01/quake-founder-john-carmack-iphone-better-than-dedicated-gaming-systems/
http://www.bnet.com/blog/gadget-guy/john-carmacks-rage-why-the-iphone-game-is-a-success/1038
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/19/ids-carmack-talks-rage-hd-ipads-power-and-future-ios-games/
And you can google many more interviews and statements of him backing up phone gaming as the platform that will win in the long run. Unless you are implying Carmack does not care about specs.
No, they won't. Because it doesn't. It exceeds it in some specs and not in others.
No, I am implying that Carmack is not saying the Vita exceeds the iPhone in all specs.
You are way overgeneralizing. I shall repeat: Money isn't what draws people into the gaming industry. People enter the gaming industry for the games. You try and tell me that companies like BioWare and Valve don't give a shit about how good their games are. They absolutely have both the marketing prowess and the loyal customer base that they could sell millions of copies of a new game that is absolute crap... but they won't because they care about making good games.
Yes, there's a lot of greed. It's primarily from the major publishers. Activision, EA, etc. They're the greedy ones. They're the ones that only care about profit. But the thing is that accomplished developers have some control in the relationship. People always think it's the publisher in control of everything but if you've made extremely successful games, you've got the publisher by the balls. They basically have to listen to what you say, or else you take your business elsewhere (or even be your own publisher if you're successful enough that you can fund a game yourself).
Unless you have two logins and are also sonicmerlin, my post was to him saying "no one who cares about specs is going to do serious coming on a touchscreen".
Because that seems smarter to me than coming out with a $500+ device that only plays games in a dead economy. Did you look at the specs? there ain't no way in hell unless Sony is willing to take a bath on the BOM to get that thing for less than $500, and as we saw with the 3DS folks just ain't shelling out right now, not at those prices.
I don't know where you get $500 from. Sony announced the price of the Vita months ago: $249 for the wifi-only model, $299 for the one that also has 3G (I think it's going to be on AT&T in the U.S. Ugh.).
Don't forget the added benefit of the Vita - it'll work with your PS3.
Carmack is a game developer, not a game player. He obviously enjoys the challenge of coding for limited systems, but gamers aren't going to settle for feeble touch-screen controls and $2 time wasters. And just like the console vs. PC issue, smartphone games are much more easily pirated.
Carmack is not a game player? Really? wow.
Anyways, serious question, have you actually looked at least to iOS gaming? Your statement of "feeble touch screen controls and $2 time wasters" makes it seem as you haven't and are just running off what you have heard from Sony's cellphone gaming bashing.
There are loads of games, very high quality games from publishers like Square Enix (Final Fantasy 3 for $15, Chaos Ring, an iOS exclusive so far, for around $12, between many others,) Capcom's Street Fighter IV for $6.99, Unreal Engine powered Infinity Blade and loads of quality games (arguably a bit unoriginal in some of their central themes but high quality none the less) ranging from $7-$10 from GameLoft (they also make games for the PSP and DS.) Thats also with many high quality names by lesser known companies like NyxQuest for 4.99.
Many of the 99c games are also extremely good, like the now legendary Angry Birds, Cut the Rope and the Zenonia RPG series, between many many others.
Cant speak much for Android, but iOS is loaded with great games on covering a huge spectrum of quality and prices.
I own a Nintendo DS Lite and a PSP. I barely use them due to how bulky they are, unless I am carrying my laptop bag with me, I leave the things at home, and at home I have consoles to play with. I own FF3 for the DS and ended up restarting the game in the iPod Touch because it looks insanely better there, plus the iPod Touch does not look like a tumor in my tight when I put it in my pocket.
I will must also add: I spent 2 years owning an iPhone and not bothering with gaming, thinking on-screen touch controls were stupid. After playing with them a bit I realized it was a baseless assumption. Touch controls have an unfounded bad reputation.
As for piracy, PSP and DS piracy is notoriously easy, not that a player should care about that (unless they want to pirate.)
Interesting. Still its a pitty cause it would of made a great work playstation (for lunchbreaks) if i could plug it into my monitor.
Rocket Surgeon.
The raw RAM number hardly matters as much as how it is applied in a phone. If Android has been filled with bloatware requiring you to root the phone to get rid of it, then a gig of RAM won't do much good. If it's efficient, half that can run games quite well. Also, look at the actual RAM of some gaming systems and you'll be surprised at how little it takes.
Only true if you don't factor in data. These days you can have maps of most streets on every major continent, every family picture or video you or your loved ones have ever taken, every movie, TV show or documentary you own etc. etc., scientific catalogs (I have legal copies of several multi-GB astronomy catalogs), entire book and encyclopedia collections. Some of this data compresses well. Most of it does not. There's always a need for more RAM and storage.
Your quote brings to mind 640k should be enough for anyone. Not everyone does little other than browse the web, read email, and use online apps.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
He's* posting what he hopes is a valid, interesting point of view with what I can only imagine is technically accurate (or at least materially so) background.
Clearly, the use of the wrong word "your" for "you're" is something that can be easily corrected, and learned from. But just as clearly, communication of ideas is unimpeded in this case, and if a minor grammar oopsie is enough to lead you to discard his whole viewpoint, then you must discard a LOT (not alot) of viewpoints, especially those voiced by non-native English speakers or those that focus more on formulating ideas and connections and not the rules of grammar.
*Dunno which pronoun to use for you, Nyder ^^
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
Then there are devices like the iControlPad. Have your phone when you want it to be just a phone, strap on gaming controls when you want something more than Angry Birds or driving games.
Or work to produce devices that can attach to phone and give them buttons via a bluetooth HID device.
As any console developer will tell you. If the console didn't come with it, there is no point in developing a game that requires it.
Even if someone makes an analog controller + dpad accessory that will bolt on awkwardly to (some small fraction!!) of available handsets and probably won't attach well to any handset realeased 6 months before the accessory launches or any handset release afterwards... virtually nobody is going to have one, and even fewer will develop games that make use of it.
And as a game company, where are you going to put your investment?
Are you going to invest 10+ millions to sell a 50 dollars game to one million gamers, or are you going to invest less than 1 million to sell a 99 cents game to 500 million gamers?
Yes I can do the math and a $0.99 game being sold to 500m people is the way to go however where do you come up with 500m people who will buy that particular $0.99 game? If you produce a good $0.99 game then you may if you are very lucky you may get say 10m purchases. Lets be honest here how many really good and even not so good games are available for the Android and iPhone and out of those games how many people will purchase that game?
Personally I am not really interested in hand held gaming machines nor am I interested in PC gaming. When I play games I prefer to play on a console that will display on a large HD Wide screen TV. I do have an Android phone and while I do play games on it when I am travelling I always go for the free games of which there are many and admittedly not many of those are much good but the same can be said for games that you pay for.
To make money in the smart phone market you really need to give your game away for free but with advertising. Even then the competition is cut throat and only exceptional games actually make money.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Games on my phone are now good enough that it's not worth carrying around a second device just for games. If Sony wants to sell this thing they should make it capable of making phone calls and running standard android apps. Either that or make it wafer thin and close to weightless.
I am trolling
Games on my phone are now good enough that it's not worth carrying around a second device just for games. If Sony wants to sell this thing they should make it capable of making phone calls and running standard android apps. Either that or make it wafer thin and close to weightless.
You mean like the Xperia play they are putting out?
- Makes calls
- Runs Gingerbread (with Android Marketplace)
- Runs PlayStation games
http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/products/mobilephones/overview/xperia-play?cc=gb&lc=en
They are working through their Mobile phone arm to create a PlayStation platform in phones.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
You need a cell phone contract for your 7 and 9 year old?
Further, anyone over the age of 12 who has a Sony Vita PS will be widely seen as a cunt.
Ah, a troll. Quite possibly a Microsoft (or Nintendo) fanboy.
The device is useless without at least 2 or 3 of those premium priced games that are so highly priced because they must be distributed to stores, where the store and every single distributor in between the studio and you wants a large cut of the sale.
You can buy games via the handhelds "app store" for $5-$15 bucks. Granted they aren't the premium experience of the latest tier one titles are for $40 bucks... but then neither is "Angry Birds" .
And if phones do manage to completely wrestle control of the handheld market away from consoles... expect to see $40+ titles in the app store.
Also, decent phones start at $50 today,
$50 + $20/mo. The handheld is still cheaper after 5 months. I still play my 10 year old GBA.
ponder how things will be there by the end of 2012
Good point. The handheld console I buy today will be supported by new games for the next several years.
The handset I buy today will be obsolete in 6 months, and game support on it will be hit and miss after that... probably mostly miss.
Even on the iphone, which is by far the least fragmented smart phone OS and with one of longer support curves, even here many titles will not run on an iphone or iphone 3G. And the3GS lacks the power for some new titles as well.
Good luck getting a new premium game to run on a 2 year old android.
Then there are devices like the iControlPad. Have your phone when you want it to be just a phone, strap on gaming controls when you want something more than Angry Birds or driving games.
And ease of use on par with the DOS command line. With 4 different modes, only 2 of which work unless you jailbreak the phone. Bluetooth pairing fun on android that requires a separate Bleuz IME to be installed. Manually mapping controls. Interchangeable clamps for different phones - with additional clamps envisioned for your next unit. Separately managed battery.
And then when its all done, you've still got haphazard game support.
Yep, its for people who like setting things up to play games almost as much as actually playing them.
Oh, and at $75 + $25 shipping, its almost the same price as a Nintendo 3DS.
Yeah, this is gonna be HUGE! :p
Don't get me wrong its pretty cool, and I kind of want one myself now... but I don't think its going to be the future of handheld gaming.
Which is exactly why they didn't want it to have HDMI out. The Sega Nomad had VGA out and I'm sure it ate into Genesis sales.
No one is predicting the end of the remotes because remotes cost between 5 and 10 dollars and their batteries last months
I should have said "universal remotes". Stuff like the Harmony 700, 900, Onem and beyond. $100-$350 and beyond, usb programmable, touch screens, costs as much as a cellphone and absolutely inferior to a cellphone in terms of specs and performance.
But the UI is a remote. Compared to using a remote control "app" for your phone... well there is just no comparison. The remote is far and away the better device for the job.
Tactile controls, as I noted in another reply, may not be a long lasting advantage. Samsung may release a phone next month with analog sticks and offer it as the "definitive gaming android device" and the others may follow suit very very fast
And they may discontinue it shortly thereafter. And others might release phones with different numbers and placements of buttons.
Samsung X has two analogs a d-pad, and 2 shoulder buttons and a/b/x/y. HTC Y has 1 analog 2 dpads, 4 shoulder buttons, and x/y. Motorola Z has 1 dpad and a/b.
And most phones won't have anything.
That's not really an improvement. And few developers will likely make good use of them.
Wont be long before some one like MadCatz start offering bluetooth cases with very discrete but tactile inputs. I would expect some to show by the end of 2012.
The iControlPad that's out now, is $100, and looks clumsy as hell. You can buy a DS Lite for that, and your well on your way to a PSP or 3DS.
The overlap may not be complete, but this thing already ate into the japanese handheld market share (its not going to happen, it already happened.)
it already happened.) It has been moving so incredibly fast (in less than 3 years) that I would not be shocked if the only advantage vanished by the end of 2012.
Most phones won't have controls developers can count on being present ever. Its an add on accessory at best. Consoles also have a MUCH longer service life. Anyone who would shell out for add on controls, and is willing to carry them around... might as well just buy a console.