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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)."
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.
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.
512MB is pretty good. The PS3 only has 256MB of RAM (plus another 256MB for graphics). That's the same amount that's in the XBox 360, but on the Vita there is another 128MB of dedicated graphics RAM. In this respect, the Vita is very well specced.
I usually wish consoles had more memory when they came out. Imagine the difference doubling the ram on the PS3 or 360 would have. Doubling the Wii's RAM would make a big difference too. RAM tends to end up so cheap, it just seems like a lack of foresight not to put more in.
The Vita is going to have big problems though. It's nice, but it's still a portable console, and those seem to be dying. The only real thing I'd say this has going for it above an iPhone is the controls, and someone could fix that on the iPhone with a shell. The 3DS isn't doing well, and the PSP was never that big here in the states. In the last year or two, it's barely felt like an also-ran. The only people I know who love them do so because they hacked it. My PSP gathers a ton of dust, coming out once in a blue moon.
Good luck Sony. Even if the Vita is a kick-ass product, you've got a hell of a battle in front of you.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
People who previously owned UMDs were allowed to download free copies of their games from PSN.
Actually, due to "legal and technical reasons" this never happened.
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.
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. ;)
A game console's specs really don't matter. What really matters are the games. Perhaps I'm in the minority but I really don't care if a game doesn't have pure HD graphics and ray-tracing and other eye candy as long as the game is fun. Heck, I'd rather have worse graphics and get rid of loading screens on any game than have better graphics with loading screens. I'd rather have a fun FPS like Team Fortress 2 that doesn't have fancy graphics than a game with broken gameplay but has excellent graphics. Once you get past a certain point where the game isn't really limited (I'd say about the 16 bit era for 2D games and the PS2/GameCube/Xbox era for 3D games) improving the graphics doesn't significantly improve gameplay.
iPhone "gaming" annoys the heck out of me. Most of the "games" must be programmed for people with the attention span of a gnat. There really is no game to speak of. I don't need a 70+ hour RPG every time, but I expect a game to have at least a good 10 hours of gameplay in single player mode to complete the story or main objective in a modern 2011 game if I'm going to be paying any money at all for it.
The 3DS was launched -way- too soon. First, its battery life is pathetic, especially when compared to the DS Lite which can hold a charge for a long time. Secondly, what games were worth playing to buy a 3DS for on launch day? The launch was the worst launch I think I've seen on a console in recent memory. Third, its already nearly September and there are -still- no decent games out for the 3DS that aren't ports. Yes, I love Ocarina of Time, but do I really need it on a million different consoles with nothing added? After all, I can get it on the N64, on the GameCube (with the added Master Quest for free for pre-ordering Wind Waker), on the Wii (via Virtual Console for $10) and now on the 3DS? I mean, if there was some added content, a re-worked sountrack or something it would be a must have, but assuming you've already played it, what's the point? And yes, Street Fighter IV: 3D edition is good, but again, it is a port.
I think that there is a huge market for real handheld games, it is just both Sony and Nintendo aren't putting out any games worth buying at the moment.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
And the PS3 is half a decade old. The iPhone has as much ram as the vita.
Sorry, but I'm willing to pay more for better hardware. I wish console makers would get that through their fucking skulls. Your games are $60 and you expect your consoles to run for at least half a dozen years. For the thousands of dollars I'm going to spend on your games in the life of that console, I think I can swing a little more than $299 for the actual system itself, if you can give it a bit more juice.
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?
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!
Specs only matter to the point that they improve the games. RAM is cheap, but can have a big effect on gameplay. More RAM means you can hold more a level in memory at a time, meaning you have less loading screens. I've had a blast with my GBA and DS despite their specs being orders of magnitude less than the PSP, iPhone, etc.
iPhone games are mostly little 5 minute time fillers, but there is some good stuff in there. Boardgames work especially well. I think having additional control options above the touchscreen would allow much better games. Very few action games work with a touchscreen.
I agree with the 3DS. The DS had a big game draught after launch, but there were enough good GBA games that it wasn't that bad. The price on the 3DS was a big mistake, the lack of a single must-have game was a mistake. It's been out for ~6 months and the only game I'm lusting after is the next Professor Layton game, which isn't out and probably won't need 3D.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
...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.
I recon if Nintendo wanted to sell more 3DSs, they would produce a new (not ported) Mario title in the style of Mario Galaxy or Mario 64 and make it require a 3DS.
Then your previous statement is blatantly false; iPhones will not exceed all specs of the Vita if they don't have analog sticks.
If you can't even spell "you're" properly why are you writing so much useless text?