PS Vita Developer Says Launch Will Be "Car Wreck"

"If people aren't willing to pay $249 for a Nintendo 3DS, why would they pay $299 for Vita?"

Well, the PS Vita is a higher-end and significantly more powerful portable media device, so I think a higher price tag is justified. The question is whether it's worth an extra $80 or $130 over the 3DS? When the PS Vita pricing was announced my impression was that the 3DS was comparatively overpriced, having the same $250 MSRP as the non 3G Vita.

i only ussed psp to watch vids and instead of buying this i bought an andriod phone for $175

the 3DS is a failure because the device sucks, and there are no games. Vita will do better because it can play real games, not silly things like angrybirds (which can be played on google+ for free apparently). Real games have a story that lasts more than 10-20 minutes, and involve puzzles that take more than 2 minutes to solve. There is still a market for that. I think OnLive is a much bigger threat to mobile game platforms than the app stores because it will allow real full console and PC games on any mobile device.

The main reason the 3DS failed was due to the bad press about the screen causing eye conditions, a small game library, and region locking.

What people want from a device, is for it to be a specialized device for gaming, which has a large library, which doesn't require jailbreaking in order to play all games developed for the system. This is proven by how well regular DS and PSP sales are world wide per the weekly hardware charts.

I would like to agree but personally I'm a little bit more optimistic. Smart phones are still phones. A device whose main purpose is communication. I believe the gaming aspect of smart phones are meant for casual gamers who don't care about physical buttons.

Its not compareable at all. You cannot simply compare a handheld gaming device with a smartphone.

First of all its uncomfortable to game on a smartphone without buttons, secondly a smartphone cannot handle awesome quality games like say uncharted or god of war etc. A smartphone cannot be used for 4-5 hours of continous gaming. If you do so then its absolutely useless once it dies.

The point is that even though your smartphone can do a lot of things, the priority is still for communication. So even if you game on a smartphone, it would be say just to pass your time and once you play for half an hour or an hour you realize oh wait i have to save up the battery and there ends the gaming session.

So if anyone is happy playing casual games and once in a while gaming, then yes smartphone is enough for them but i doubt that ANY hardcore gamer would prefer a smartphone rather than a kickass handheld device.

I think Xperia Play is a great idea that Sony never put any money behind, just dropped it in Verizon’s lap and said "here you go, it’s all yours". You need to get it out to ALL the wireless Co's or you’ll never get good market share. The software emulation, now that’s where the money could be if a good control scheme is developed or some type of BT peripheral is made.

Smart phones cost just as much if not more, and do most things worse than Vita outside of phone calls and texting. Phones are also far more disposable with a much shorter life cycle are far less support than a device like Vita.

Playing any type of legitimate game on a cell phone is a nightmare because of the tiny screen and horrible interface, touch screen or not. I believe there's still a market for a dedicated portable multimedia device, especially when it can be linked to a PS3 and vice versa. People are acting like the only thing this kit can do is play games just because you can't call people on it. Really.... apparently they forgot about music, movies, internet, PSN chat, front and rear cameras, GPS, PS3 controller functionality, a bigger screen on a device that'll still fit in your pocket, etc.

Case in point: if I'm on the go, I'd choose a Vita for entertainment any day of the week over a smart phone/tablet/iPad/etc.

The thing is, if a gamer wants to game, he's gonna buy a portable console. It's a one time purchase (other than games of course). No muss, no fuss. No contracts to sign. No monthly payments.

Buying a smartphone just to play games means your gonna have to sign up for a 2-3 yr contract. Your gaming device just became a whole lot more expensive over a 3 yr period.

The 2 different genres are tuff to mesh while satisying the consumers of both sides.

Retitle to "No name shovelware developers jump on the bandwagon". Go google them, tell me anything they've made is worthwhile, even THQ dumped them. Go check out their site too, I was able to notice they stole Enix's slime mascot in their job advert before the "UFC Trainer" advert exploded my speakers with fail and I ran.

This has nothing to do with what gamers want. Small time devs like this like the fact they can compete with the big boys using 99 cent games. They can't make a million dollar "blockbuster" but they can make a few cartoon birds and pigs. People are much more likely to buy their garbage when it's 99 cents. It's the Taco Bell marketing strategy, people will buy it no matter how terrible it is if it's cheap. On the other side, it's much easier for the big production studios to toss out short games and make their money back selling extras and DLC once the hook is in.

Yeah, the industry loves app store gaming, they win. It's the gamers that lose. You aren't going to get a quality product consistently at that price. You aren't going to get high end graphics that took 20 people to draw. You aren't going to pay a design team to strategize and put unique inputs into designing a level perfectly. You are not going to get the same level of product for 99 cents that you are for 50 dollars, that just isn't how things work. There's a lot of 50 dollar games that aren't worth more than 99 cents, but with the industry following this path, ALL you will get is products only worth 99 cents.

Unfortunately many people will be whinging about the price, come christmas they'll go an buy one or two (DSes and Vitas) for thier kids, then they can go back to whinging about the economy and taxes with the rest of the tea baggers.

i believe it is a simple matter of what niche does it aim... i mean... A serious gamer who wants to play on-the-go, might not want a graphics-wise weak system like the Nintendo's 3DS, and may be willing to pay a quarter-thousand dollars for a nice, powerful and trusted design-wise portable console.

And may i add... the game library of the Vita is actually exciting, since many great titles will be present, like Uncharted, God of War, Need for Speed (the serious ones) and many exclusives with very good graphics, which is what i think hardcore gamers nowadays want.

Just two notes i wanna make explicit.
1: i hope the Vita doesn't heat up too much, because with so much power overall, and no dedicated cooling (at least the PSP didn't had, as far as i know), which would be very troublesome.
2: if Sony downgrades vita again, i'll remove my good thoughts and start to think again about it. I was very, very excited about its very-high end specs when it was first talked about some months ago. Something like several gigs of RAM, a very high end GPU, a quad-core processor and something like that were the rumors. I was thinking "wow, finally the handhelds are catching up to the real world. Thanks, Sony." and now i'm more like "meh... just another facelift over the old PSP... some touchscreens? Little improvement over graphics? No, thanks."

I said it before and I will say again, for Sony to win the portable war they must add these futures to PSVITA.

1- Built in HD tuner so we can watch the HD free to air TV on the go.

2- Built in digital radio so we can listen to radio station not just mp3.internet radio cost too much data and $$ so that is not an option.

3- APP store, like Apple, and Go...

I said it before and I will say again, for Sony to win the portable war they must add these futures to PSVITA.

1- Built in HD tuner so we can watch the HD free to air TV on the go.

2- Built in digital radio so we can listen to radio station not just mp3.internet radio cost too much data and $$ so that is not an option.

3- APP store, like Apple, and Google android market, so we can download apps like face book Google earth, angry birds, and so on, etc.

4- Built in turn by turn navigation, like tom-tom, and nav man, etc.

5- Built in 8MP camera, with HD video recording.

6- A good web browser, not like the crappie PSP browser.

7- Must support the latest flash player, and java plug-in.

Sony is only targeting gamers with PSVITA, in my opinion that’s a bad move.They must target everyone.

I have a ps3 I hardly use it for games I got it for bluray and playtv futters and PSN videos store.

Back when the psp still had games I actually wanted to play I used to carry around my DS, my psp and my iphone. DS for when I was travelling, psp for when I had a lunchbreak and my iphone to use as a phone. I'm perfectly fine with carrying multiple devices.
Clearly this guy has never heard of bags or something.

Well...the Vita is definitely more advance than 3DS but to the question if people want to pay such price is another problem.
In my opinion, game titles have more influence for the price of a gaming device.

Let take an example. I have a DS and a PSP...I carry DS around with me but my PSP is somewhere in my room covered with dust...why?...I do not like the games or I can not find interesting games...now, I regret paying such price for my PSP...

note: I am using also a Desire...no relation at all with DS or PSP and I am not interested on getting Xperia play!

I think having more than one device is better, mainly because of the battery issue. I don't want to limit my conversations to a (very likely) ~8% remaining battery charge. Especially if it's an important call. For carrying one device, I would carry an iPod touch (which won't have 3G, hopefully). Less radiation to worry about too.

It's not going to be a "car wreck". Personally, I won't EVER go for the 3G version ($300) because I seriously don't need another data plan.

Another take is this: Phones have been a part of handheld devices far before it was the other way around. The original PSP could make calls through the wifi, and it was free! Add a 2g/3g network and you're golden. As long as you can make a call with the Vita (which can't seriously be that hard to mod) it should sell just fine.

I want to purchase the best portable gaming experience and I think the Vita will be that. I also want to see some nice games available at launch.

I don't want to see this device become cell carrier subsidized or bundled, contracted or any of that crap.

Now if I could pop in a sim card and the device would also act as a simple cellphone and texting, that would be great. I could bring it to work and justify it as my phone.

And they need to do somethng - either reduce the price or offer an external UMD drive and allow to play their PSP library (or at least some way to load in your existing game library and licenses). At least with the 3DS you have access to the large DS library. Much easier to invest $169 on a 3DS knowing that it will play my daughters DS games.

Dedicated gaming handhelds are still completely viable in my opinion. I gladly carry my iPod, DS, and smartphone everywhere I go. I do this because they all excel at one or two things. No one has yet to come out with a mobile device that can effectively and sufficiently meet my mobile needs. I prefer to play games on the DS to save my phone battery for calls and my iPod for playing music. The DS on the other hand doesn't surf the web, play music, or make phone calls as well as my phone or iPod. I've looked into combining my MP3 player and phone into one device, but combining them loses me some features and puts my eggs into one basket (leaving me with nothing if the battery on my combined device goes dead).

Handheld consoles are great for hardcore gamers. Both the PSP and DS have an impressive catalog of ports and revamps that make them worth owning. Final Fantasy I, FFII, FFIII, and FFIV are all playable on the PSP and/or DS. The Monster Hunter Freedom series (games that can suck up hundreds of hours) are all found on PSP. Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together are another pair of PSP games that players could easily play for months and not max/finish/100% everything.(I've put over a hundred hours into the two games within the past year and i've yet to complete either of them.)

Handheld consoles are also great for smaller developers, because of the much lower development costs. Many games that would have never seen the light of day on the Xbox 360 or PS3 have been released to great sales on handhelds. Just because handhelds aren't the home of "HALO 8" or "Call of Duty 12: More Duds with Guns," doesn't me they are any less hardcore. In fact they are probably more hardcore because of the lack of huge blockbusters such as HALO and CoD. Some series are more at home on consoles than on handhelds and vice-versa. HALO, CoD, Gears of War, etc have to have the big flashy graphics to draw in a lot of "gamers," but as far as I'm concerned graphics should be the least of any gamers worries. Good gameplay should come before graphics any day, handheld developers seem to understand that a lot better than their big console counterparts.

Kids are the #1 selling point for these. Want the kids off your expensive big screen give them a handheld game. They can play anywhere and don't tie up anything like the TV. Nintendo typically rules this area because they have easy games for kids. PS Vita is too much it doesn't fill that niche.

I think it will sell alright...

NINTENDO FAILED because their market target is always for MAINSTREAM, now there are a lot of better devices targeted on mainstream, they lose their market.

SONY will SUCCEED because their target market is always for HARDCORE GAMERS, now there's no any other device targeted on their market, they have no competitor.

And personally because I have no luck in looking for a good game, a real one, not just silly casual games on those mainstream devices.

I don't understand the sudden criticism against Vita. When it was announced everyone praised it for its exceptional price - and it still is exceptional despite 3DS's drop.

The PSP sucked primarily because of the lack of developers making awesome games for it. As a secondary concern, the lack of the second analog stick also made it hard to port many 3D games over successfully to the platform without them suffering from usability issues. The PSP was superior hardware, and it got trounced by the Nintendo DS because the DS offered innovative game play. I haven't seen Sony make anything truly innovative in years. The PS3 was just a much faster PS2. The Move was a response to the Wii, and while it is more accurate and responsive, it's also a LOT more expensive than the Wii is. The xbox is also less powerful than the PS3, but it has MUCH better online support, is cheaper, and has most of the same games that the PS3 does.

Sony gives you better hardware that does the exact same thing as everybody else for more money. I have yet to see Sony really push themselves and developers to make something extraordinary using their hardware that simply can't be done on another platform. The Wii did that. The DS did that. Sony just expects me to re-purchase my favorite PSP games for a second time because they got rid of UMD cartridges.

Didn't you hear, Angry Birds is coming to Vita next year. =) Silly Games, that are awesome on touch screen devices.

vita's too damn big. 7 inch width??? how the hell is that gonna attract casual gamers??? its over half a foot big. while it looks cool, its clunkier than ipod, and wen it comes to portables, i want a simpler sort of game. not angry birds simple, but mariokart or cave story. deep games, but they're not epics. i have consoles for that. vita will initially do decent, but i think 3DS will beat it, but iOS will win again. Nintendo 3DS is simple, but fun. and the library is gradually improving, and its cheap. sorry mini brick vita, i cant see the practicality of buying you.