Monthly Archives: June 2012

(Behind) Why My Vita Hype? (Plus the video, of course)

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The relatively simple idea of this video came to me about a week ago. I try not to be a bitter person, in fact i perceive myself as a bit of an optimist, but there’s only so much “The Vita has no games” that a man can take before he wants to fling himself out of a window.  So I decided that I was going to make a video using just what’s on my 32gb card (I also have a 16gb that is full – hey Sony, release a 64gb please!) and show off that there are, in fact, games.

My initial ideas for the whole thing were a bit more lame though.  Originally I was going to do a funeral motif, play off the whole VITA IS DOOOOMED thing. What I liked about that was that it meant I could use amazing music like Mozart’s Requiem.  But what I didn’t like was that I was stooping to their level. So I decided to start shooting footage of me playing games and figured something would come to me as i edited.

I was naive enough to think this was something that I could finish in one afternoon.  After said afternoon I had footage for about 10 of the 60 games.  So I kept plugging away.  It’s been an interesting week for me on a personal level as well, which may seem weird to mention here but I’m weird and I think it affected my work.  My grandmother nearly passed away to the point where they said she would be dead in the morning and then somehow was still alive. I’m still conflicted over this as she has suffered from dementia for 10 years now and the stroke that caused this has limited her movement even further. But the woman is a truck. 25 years ago, when I was ten, she used to say stuff like “this might be my last Christmas with you kids.”  Haha, Nana, you so crazy.

Anyway, so yeah – that was incredibly painful, and meanwhile my wife is away working on a movie (she is a makeup artist) with the dude that played Lee Adama on Battlestar Galactica and one of the Lanister’s from Game of Thrones.  Which is awesome.  But it meant I had the house to myself, I had a bunch of days off from work, so really all I had to take me out of my own brain was this silly video.  So i really got absorbed in the whole thing.  Over the course of three days I got all of the principle shooting done.  And then it was two days of editing down the clips for each game to the 10 second to 30 second range (depending on the game, of course).  But I still didn’t know what i was going to do with it all.

Once I started editing I threw out the funeral motif almost instantly.  I wanted this to be a celebration of the games, not a sarcastic response to some idiots on random internet forums. So I started throwing title cards in and away I went.  My first cut was almost 17 minutes long, which is actually on YouTube but hidden, I’ll throw the link below.  I kept writing and rewriting these stupid cards because I didn’t like the tone.  And in the end I got the video below 13 minutes… and I still don’t like most of the text, but I reached a point where I was happy with what I had.

A big part of it was the music.  Explosions in the Sky are amazing, if you like that song (the first song in the video) i highly recommend checking them out.  The second song was sent to me over Spotify by Nasero of the Critical Strike Podcast, which if you haven’t listened to you should – and he also does a bunch of videogame music episodes so a song sent by him making it into this video really isn’t all that surprising.  Likewise, Mik of the Player One Podcast (who did all of the art for this site) suggested the title to me in an email.  So the music guy suggested a song and an Ad man suggested the title.  I have good friends.

So the video went up last night and immediately people started reacting to it.  I don’t know that they necessarily felt all of the emotion I put into it, but I think people did feel like this was more than just a bunch of games stuck together.  I spent hours going section by section syncing the music to the action on the screen.  My personal favorite moment is in gravity rush, there’s this weird noise in the song for no reason that i made coincide with one of Kat’s kick to the face.  But, anyway, people dug it.  Shuhei Yoshida (Head of Worldwide Studios at Sony) retweeted it.  As did Jeff Rubenstein.  I was honored.  I kept watching all night as the views got higher, hits on this site went up, I put it on reddit and it was voted up to the front page (for those subscribed to /r/vita) in about two hours.  It was overwhelming… in a good way.

The video is not without its critics, of course, and I expected as much.  Since I’m actually writing all of this after the fact I get to respond to them (hooray for procrastination!).  First off is the question of “Why so many PSP and Minis?” And my general answer to that is “because they are awesome.”  I understand completely that you can play these games on a PSP and, hey, if that’s what you want to do more power to you.  But fact of the matter is that they look best and play best on the Vita.  People pay far more than $250 for graphics cards for the computers to have their existing games look and play better, I don’t see what’s different here.

The other complaint/question is “yeah but is it worth it for just the Vita games?”  I feel like the video, with 22 Vita games, does show that yes, there are a ton of amazing games.  Personally if I could only play Vita games and not PSP or Minis, would still be thrilled with the system.  There’s been more great Vita games released in the last four months than there has been console games.  I know this summer is thin, and this fall will also be console heavy (though the Vita does have a pretty amazing Fall), but as of right now just Vita games would sustain me.  There are a bunch and they are awesome.

Sony needs to get on the ball with this system.  I don’t live in lala land, I do understand it’s not selling well.  The system itself is expensive and the memory costs on top of it are mental. They also don’t do a very good job of promoting their products.  In fact, one day I saw a bunch of incoming links to here from 4-chan so i decided to check it out.  Turns out that they thought that I was a Sony viral marketer on neogaf and with this site.  It cracked me up.  I wish I was getting paid for this.  I don’t run ads or anything so basically this site costs me money… which is fine.  But it was hysterical.  And hopefully this video clears up that I am, in fact, not a Sony Viral Marketer because the video actually does a good job of selling the Vita.  Zing!

So here is the video.  If you haven’t already I would love if you would click-through and give it a thumbs up and maybe toss a comment on it.  I think YouTube uses all of that stuff in determining how high in the search results it comes up.  And for everyone who has supported this site since day one, thank you.  And to all the new people here – thank you.  I really enjoy doing this but if no one showed up I would shut it down. It’s going to be a slow summer, unfortunately, but the site will be going strong.  In fact I guess that just means I have time to make more videos.  And if you would be so kind to spread the word about the site, or the video, or whatever, you will have my eternal thanks.

Here’s the link to the long version.  It’s the same games, just less split-screening.

Also, if you want to watch it on the YouTube app on the Vita just search for Why My Vita Hype, it’s at the top of the list.  It looks great on that OLED.

A comprehensive and spin-free breakdown of system launches since 2004

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We have one more week of releases until the Vita has hit the 4 month mark in the US a few days later (June 22nd, of course).  During this time we’ve seen a fair amount of “VITA HAS NO GAMES” by clever folks on the internet who like to parrot lines without using their brains. If you own a Vita and have spent some time looking you know this isn’t true. Well, like any other system, if you don’t like the games that’s one thing.  One could say “PC HAS NO GAMES!!!” even though there’s at least 20 releases a week on Steam – if they hate PC games.  That’s an absurd stance to take in an argument. But we will get into how these games are viewed critically as well.

We have no idea if any smaller games are going to pop up on the store later tonight (as of the time of this writing the update with Gravity Rush and MGS HD isn’t up) or next week, so we will go off the assumption that they won’t.  I’m also going to be working off the assumption that Lego Batman will release next week, though the addition of that one game will not have any major impact on what I’m about to lay out in front of you.

There is no argument that I prefer the Playstation systems. I like to think I’m a reasoned man but I’ve seen men more mature than me devolve into fanboy arguments and I certainly have as well. My aim with this piece is not that. This is purely to get the numbers out there.

So instead of being long-winded lets just look at the first four months of releases for each system out since the Nintendo DS in 2004, according to Metacritic and Wikipedia.

Games released in first four months (in North America only):

Wii: 60   (includes retail and Virtual Console)

Vita: 48 (includes retail and PSN), (Does not include minis)

Xbox 360: 46 (includes retail and XBLA), (XBLIG didn’t exist during this time frame)

3DS: 40  (includes retail, Virtual Console, built-in OS games, and Wiiware games)

PS3:  34 (includes retail and PSN)  (Minis did not exist during this time period)

PSP: 29 (only includes retail as there were no download only titles or Minis during this time period)

DS: 17 (only includes retail as there were no Virtual Console or Wiiware titles during this time period)

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Right.  So there we have it.  Facts.  Math.  Science. Numbers. Whatever you want to call it. Though one can argue (and probably should argue) that it’s not how many games you have, it’s the quality of the games. Each system has shovelware, no doubt about it. For the Vita this is mostly in the form of the A.R. games (of which there are 4, though I really like the Tank one) but the early days of the PSN and XBLA have some absolutely horrid titles in there as well.  And even the most ardent Nintendo fan can’t argue that the vast majority of the 50 Wii games out in the first four months are any good.   The Wii’s numbers are a bit skewed because none of the Virtual Console games got enough reviews to get tracked.  But take heart Nintendo fans, we know your favorite company has the most brilliant catalog of old games in the business.  This piece is about numbers though, not opinions (even if I just gave some *cough*).

So of the lists above, lets break down how many of each has a Metacritic of 70% or higher.

Wii:  60 games — 15 with a Metacritic of 70% or higher.

Vita: 48 games —  21 with a Metacritic of 70% or higher.

360: 46 games — 33 with a Metacritic of 70% or higher

3DS: 40 games — 11 with a Metacritic of 70% or higher  (note that all three versions of Nintendogs were counted individually)

PS3: 34 games — 20 with a Metacritic of 70% or higher

PSP:  29 games — 17 with a Metacritic of 70% or higher

DS:  17 games — 5 with a Metacritic of 70% or higher

So what should we take from all of these numbers? I am going to write an opinion piece on it shortly as I wanted to have this just be about the numbers, but a few things are clear. The Vita has the second most games and it has the second most games with a metacritic of 70% or higher in the 4 month time period after launch.  The meme “VITA HAS NO GAMES!” is factually incorrect, unless that person also feels that every system in the last 8 years also had no games.

Another fact that even someone who despises Microsoft can’t ignore…  they had one helluva launch and by far had the most critically acclaimed games.  The DS, compared to the others, had a horrendous launch. But if we look at lifetime sales of all the systems above, the DS is head and shoulders above the rest.

The numbers are interesting and I will be breaking them down further.  But here they are now, in their naked glory.

What’s brewing at FYVH?

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As you all know we are heading into the dead season for the Vita (and really all consoles) and things have slowed down around here as well.  We are still working on things.  Camus is working on a review for Pure Chess.  I decided early on that I didn’t want to power through Gravity Rush… so i’m taking all in – in small chunks.  So a review is a ways off but if you come to this site I’m gonna guess you already know it’s awesome.  I am also making my way through The MGS-HD collection.  It’s massive and I am absolutely terrible at those games so a review of that may be about 6 years away.  But, again, you pretty much know what to expect with that title.  I am also working on Lego Batman and a review of that should be up in a week or so.

I, personally, have been working on my biggest video project yet.  I’m not ready to reveal it yet but I have some fun with the “VITA IS DOOMED” meme while showing footage of every game I have on my 32gb card.  When I  started it I thought I would get it done in an afternoon.  A week later with about 120 clips to be cut down and snipped together I’m still not halfway done.  But I’m going to make a big push to get it out this month.  And then I’m gonna post it in every NEOGAF “THE VITA IS DOOMED” thread (which is what, 10 threads a day?).  Incoming ban?  I hope not, but it will be fun.

Also, my podcast has had much Vita game talk, of course, and I’m planning on pulling folks from other podcasts i’m friendly with to do an episode explicitly about the Vita from launch to now.  So I will post that here when it happens.

It’s going to be a slow summer but even if the updates slow down we aren’t going away.  I am hopeful to start getting interviews with some of the smaller Vita devs and other things.  So keep checking back, you may actually find something of worth.

 

And don’t forget to follow the twitter account which is over to the right on the site.  We tweat news, deals, links to other vita sites, etc.

FyFYI Episode 147: Incoming Fatwa

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The slow summer, we don’t love shooters yet have 4 each, Battlefield Premium, will good Vita games get ported to the ps3, Gravity Rush, Resistance: BS, Rayman: Origins, homeopathy, Athiesim, skepticism,  and anti-christian bias.  Yeah, it’s one of those episodes.

Stream here people.

Discussed on the show:

A Christian and an Atheist 

Skepchick.org

You can also grab it off of iTunes.

Apple iTunes

Reach us at:  FYIFeedback@gmail.com

For Your Vita Hype

Check Platform Nation

We have a little forum on The Fanboys Site!

Pete’s Twitter

James’ Twitter

Review – Resistance: Burning Skies

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Resistance: Burning Skies is a strange amalgam of expectations, delusions and corporate ineptitude.  It also happens to be a pretty decent game, if you allow it to be. This game, more than any Vita title before it, is all about the attitude you bring into it.

There seem to be two factions in terms of expectations for this game.  One that wants this to be a PS3 quality Resistance game and another that merely wants a decent shooter, with two sticks, on a handheld. I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out which of these camps will enjoy the game.  But hey, I have to write the review anyway, right?

I will say it was never fair in the first place to compare this game to the PS3 series.  The hardware isn’t as good, the team developing isn’t as good, the budget was smaller, the development time was shorter.  These are all Sony’s fault, not Nihilistic’s, but the general public seems to be mad at them anyway.  Sony doesn’t take its handheld as seriously as Nintendo does.  Super Mario 3D Land was made by the team that made Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2. Resistance: Burning Skies was made by the team that made the godawful Playstation Move Heroes.  Sony has a lot to learn in this area.

But for everything Nihilistic had going against it, including its own mediocrity, they have created a solid product.  Resistance: Burning Skies rarely strives to do anything beyond average, but it does average pretty darn well.  Most of this is helped by the Resistance universe itself being decent canon for the story and for Insomniac’s previous work in the series creating these wonderful guns.  But Nihilistic has done a great job of bringing the universe and guns to life on a handheld and they should be commended for that.  This feels like a Resistance game, even if it’s not as good.

The game starts out slow (which, if you’ve played the demo, you already know) but it picks up pretty quickly.  And all of the staples of a Resistance game are there from interesting set pieces (minor spoiler:  I really enjoyed fighting on a bridge I used to drive over daily).  They also included the incredibly huge bosses that the series really became known for in Resistance 2 – complete with glowy parts to shoot.  Again, none of this is extraordinary; it’s ordinary.

Will ordinary make you happy? I fall into the camp that a technically capable shooter, with two sticks, that I can play on go or in bed, seems really, really cool to me.  Instead of being amazed by the game I was more amazed by how novel playing a game like this is.  It was bolstered by my love of the Resistance universe and weapons, for sure, but really the attraction here isn’t Resistance.  The attraction is “this is a twin stick FPS on the go.”

For some that’s not enough and if you are one of those people I recommend staying away from the game.  Even the multiplayer is fairly bland, most of the fun of it is ‘omg I’m playing a decent game of deathmatch on a handheld.’   It’s instantly forgettable, but the next time you are out and need to kill some time you’ll be happy you have it with you.

Overall Resistance is a pretty small package.  The Sony Early Adopter Tax™ has this game at $40 but really it should have been part of the $30 tier.  The main story can be beaten in less than 6 hours and the multiplayer is nice to have around, but likely isn’t going to be your go-to shooter for online play.  You aren’t selling your copy of Battlefield because Resistance 4vs4 is so awesome.  It’s also worth noting you should get the platinum trophy on one play through, with maybe 1 or 2 trophies to snag afterwards if you didn’t happen to get enough headshots or something.  So even the trophies don’t help foster much replayability.

I’m giving Resistance three stars and I only bring this up to say that if the idea of a decent Resistance game on a handheld sounds good, make it four stars.  If you only want the best, make the score two stars.  This game will live up exactly to your expectations whether they are positive or negative. I enjoyed my time with it, but I can’t help feeling I was happy with it because I wanted to be.

The Vita is Not Doomed (even though Sony tried their best)

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1.

After having an insane meltdown after Sony’s E3 presser last night I went for a long walk with my wife.  We live on the shore in Connecticut and we walked down to the beach.  It was surreal – the tide was easily 10 feet higher than usual.  The beach was totally covered in water, some of it up to the road.  It was crazy.  But my general feeling when I saw it was “of course it’s doing that.”

That’s the tone that Sony had set in my mind during their press conference.  It made so little sense in so many ways that stuff not making sense just seemed par for the course.  And I must admit (and if you’re a listener of my podcast you know I’m a TMI type of person) that most of this surrealism is built upon the fact that I’m transitioning between SSRI’s that I take to keep my anxiety down.  If you’ve ever been on an antidepressant and then stopped you know that crazy, painful, scary hell I’m going through.  But that’s completely off topic… though Sony certainly didn’t help.

So let’s get the crappy parts out of the way so we can discuss why things aren’t nearly as bad as they seem.  First off, Sony’s presser was terrible.  It didn’t start that way… starting off with a new IP from Quantic Dream, heavy with atmosphere was awesome.  Seeing Playstation Allstars Battle Royale – a game type I’m not even that big on – working on stage with vita vs PS3 multiplayer was also awesome.  Things were going pretty great at this point.  I don’t even remember what other games were in there, but the conference was fun and seemed to be full of games which was the complete opposite of Microsoft’s presser earlier in the day.

And then they touched upon Assassin’s Creed: Liberation while showing maybe 1.5 seconds of footage but they had the smoke and mirrors of showing off the combo pack that comes with the game and a 4GB card.  They didn’t announce a price which opens the floodgates to speculation.  Is it because the price may be…. lower by then?!!?  Who knows.  I’m grasping at straws here but that’s really all there is to grasp at currently.

Then Sony decided to show off their new book peripheral.  I had heard about this from a few folks inside and outside of Sony – though they did manage to keep it a secret so props for that.  The problem is that the E3 audience doesn’t give a crap.  Well, if they showed it shortly, announced Harry Potter and cut to something else most of us would say “That looks awesome for my kid/little brother/cousin/etc.”  But they didn’t do that.  I’m told the presentation was 10 minutes long but honestly, and I’m not exaggerating, it felt like half an hour.  They had technical difficulties, which isn’t a huge deal, but it was just painful to watch.   At this point the air got sucked out of the room.  And it was around then that i thought to myself “Hey, wait, they’ve only showed two Vita games.  I hope after this we transition into some hardcore Vita talk.”

Um, nope.  They went into God of War 13 or whatever number they are on.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the God of War games, but after all momentum was killed by the book peripheral… watching some guy play GoW doing the same exact moves to the same exact enemies that we’ve been fighting since 2005 was painful.  And, again, they went on far too long.  So if Sony ever mutters “we didn’t have enough time” as an excuse for no Vita talk you can tell them to cram it.

They ended on The Last of Us which was so intense that I felt uncomfortable.  I say that in a good way.  I can’t wait.   And then the lights went down and Rubbenstein and the hot asian girl are chatting about how amazing their company is.

Wait.  What?  No.  No, no.  Seriously?  Is this a joke?  Maybe it’s an intermission and they are going to come back with Vita stuff?  No.  No.   SONNNNNNYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2.

After calming down from losing my shit (which I’m going to 65% blame on my med change and 35% on Sony) I started reaching out to people I know both in and around Sony.  I have journalist friends on the floor that are willing to give me a nugget or two.  I have friends in the company who will give me info when they can.  And I have friends in Sony that won’t tell me a damn thing… like one who I still won’t name out of fear of getting him in trouble for being good (Sony seems weird enough to do that).  He tried to put me at ease.

He told me to calm down.  Well, everyone told me to calm down.  He wouldn’t give me any specifics but he said the Vita hasn’t been forgotten and it will have a strong showing on the floor.

Ok.  I trust this guy.  He’s my friend.  I’m feeling better.  So I start dialing in to others.  And the story starts to come together.  Piecing it altogether I may not have a complete picture, but I feel like I have a general idea of what went wrong and where the Vita is actually headed.

Sony has a new marketing department.  The sacked their entire department a few months before the Vita came out.  Remember how in the months and weeks before the Vita came out there was next to no advertising?  Well, now you know.  They pretty quickly got up the Vita launch campaign and it was decent.  There wasn’t much support from Sony corporate as the paltry 50 million dollar ad campaign paled in comparison to Nintendo’s for the 3DS or even Microsoft for the Kinect.

Someone made the tactical decision to leave Vita games out of the conference.  I still have no idea who.  Was it marketing?  Was it higher-ups?  Was it MarcusPSP?  I have no clue.  But someone did.  The plan, it seems, was to mention the Vita a bit and let it shine on the floor.  This makes sense on paper as images from a handheld blown up on 100 foot screens isn’t the best.  But they got this decision wrong and they underestimated their audience, which is slightly insulting.  Last year Nintendo showed off 10 3DS games, and as you all know 3DS games aren’t nearly as pretty as (or the resolution of) Vita games.  They kinda looked ugly in the conference but we understood that on the 3DS screen they would be beautiful and then reports from the show floor backed that up.

So it was a decision, made by god knows who, and it was the wrong decision.  And whoever made the decision to take the Vita out of the conference needs to be told they made the wrong decision.

But the doom and gloom that exploded on the internet afterwards is a complete overreaction to the reality of the system.  If you are at this site you likely own a Vita.  You may not love as many of the games out so far that I do, but you have no doubt at least a couple of games that tell you that the Vita is an absolutely awesome device.  Be it playing daily Hot Shot’s tournaments, or killing dudes cooperatively in Unit 13, or playing amazing ports of Mortal Kombat and Marvel vs Capcom…  there’s something there that has convinced us all that this thing is a legit piece of awesomeness.   And if we feel this way – developers feel this way.  Publishers might not, since it’s all about the $$$$, but there are ways around that – which I’ll get to in my prognostication at the end.

So from talking to people on the show floor my tight lipped friend is right.  There are a bunch of Vita games in Sony’s booth (im hearing 20+).  Tretton said on stage that there would be 60 by the end of the year… averaging out to 10 a month.  More than even a whore like myself can keep up with buying.  We know next week is Gravity Rush.  Zen Pinball 2 and Retro City Rampage should be this month.  Not sure about July yet.  August will be Sound Shapes, Ragnarok and Madden.  September will be Persona 4 and (likely) Littlebigplanet and Playstation Allstars.  October we know is at least Assassin’s Creed.  November is likely when Call of Duty comes out.  Sometime in here Sly 4 will be out…

So while it’s not 1999, it’s a pretty darn impressive lineup, and this is just the more known properties.  We will be getting a lot of stuff from Japan including Tokyo Jungle and Soul Sacrifice.  There’s even some bizarre singing/rhythm game from Japan coming whose name I’ve completely forgotten.

I’ve also heard from a couple of people that digital sales on the Vita are very, very strong.  If true (and I have no reason to not trust these people) this is a great sign to encourage smaller developers to the system.  Indie gaming is coming on in a big way, with Minecraft, Dungeon Defenders and others leading the way in terms of sales… but there are so many other high quality developers making smaller games that would fit perfectly on the Vita.  From what I’ve heard Mutant Blobs Attack made a crazy amount of money on the Vita as a download only title.  We’re talking sales much, much higher than the average PSN title.  So if there is money to be made there, developers will go there.  This is a good thing.  And as we already know, this got Drinkbox back onto the system.  I had heard previously that they wanted to go multi platform with Guacamelee but they made so much money since the Vita’s launch that they and Sony got together and quickly hammered out a deal (going the pub fund route instead of Sony as publisher).

There have also been murmurs that we are going to be hearing a lot more out of Japan, starting this month.  In fact I heard that the Vita Gaming Heaven event scheduled for later this month was going to have some interesting reveals… though info on that is spotty at best.  In fact, the last time I talked to someone about this they said something along the lines of “I wouldn’t get too excited about the gaming heaven thing.”  Was she shy because of E3 (even she didn’t expect it to be so light on Vita games) or is the general feeling that Sony was going to make a push with the Gaming Heaven thing and are now backing off of it?  I don’t know the answer to that question, unfortunately.

So while the future looks bright it’s not all good news.  Friends in the industry on the floor have reported that Madden is garbage.  “The iPad version with buttons” is one quote.  If you haven’t seen the iPad version… think of the PS1 versions with less plays and worse AI.   Also, CoD is a total no show.   It’s not in Sony’s booth.  It’s not in Activision’s booth.  I’m getting the feeling that this game is either going to be terrible or vaporware.  This won’t affect me personally as I’m not a big CoD guy, but that’s certainly not good for the health of the system. But selling bad games hasn’t hurt the Kinect….

3.

My prognostication coming out of all of this is that the Vita is in trouble but I think there is a niche for it to fall into which will make some of us happy.  I think digital sales being strong combined with the fact that the hardware is easy to develop for will mean that we will see a lot of PSN-level games.  I think Sony mostly has its eyes on the Playstation 4 (I mean how half-hearted were both MS and Sony this year…?  They are clearly just thinking about next year).  But, I honestly believe Sony won’t make the same mistake they made with the PSP where they ignore it as they ready a new console.  I think Yoshida has his eye on the ball and he has the smaller studios to keep churning out decent “big” Vita games.

We know after this fall that Killzone is coming. I would assume we will get another God of War game at some point.  We will get more sequels to Hot Shots (there were two PSP Hot Shots and World Invitational was gonna be the third…) and stuff like that.  Japan will keep making weird action games and JRPGs.

I’m not worried in terms of having fun with my Vita.  I’m a fan of just about everything I just listed.  But there are some people, like the co-host of my podcast, who is likely running to the store to sell his Vita because he bought into the concept that it was going to capable of delivering AAA titles (and it is capable… but will anyone try with a small installed base?).

The Vita is on course to be a niche device.  This is only a bad thing if you don’t fit into the niche.  And if you don’t and you’re pissed off at Sony I don’t blame you.  But personally these things are exactly what I want out of the system.  In fact I’m going to end on a quote from Chris Johnston who is an ex-editor at EGM (and on the player one podcast).  And if you don’t know Chris has never been a particularly big supporter of anything by Sony…

Chris Johnston, formerly of EGM and on The Player One Podcast 

You know what I love the Vita for? Playing PSP games. I didn’t play a whole lot of PSP over the last few years and having this nice larger screen to play on has been amazing. Pixlejunk Monsters Deluxe, Patapon, PaRappa the Rapper, Valkyria Chronicles, Daxter, etc. etc. I think at this point I have 2 pages of PSP games on my Vita. They look so good on the Vita’s screen. Even if Sony doesn’t do shit with the system from now until whenever, I’m still going to be pretty happy. My only regret is buying the 3G system. I thought I was future-proofing but there’s really no real reason to have it.
 
Sony doing that AC3 bundle with the Wifi system just makes it clearer that the 3G will languish. I know I am going to love playing PS1 games on this thing too. When I can load a ton of PSP/PS1 games on the 32GB card for flights it starts mattering to me less and less than there’s new Vita support. The only thing I wish they did was save states for both PSP and PS1 games like they did on the PSPGo. Cuz that was brilliant. And it seems they kinda do that in the background but it’s just one hot-swap save not quicksaves for each game. That needs fixing.
 

So if what I outlined above and what Chris is saying here appeals to you… don’t fret over this conference.  If you want the Vita to be a AAA machine, sell 100 million units, get AAA developers to drop consoles and make games for it… well, the chances of that happening are really, really slim.

Sony still thinks it has a chance at that… but it doesn’t.  So us consumers need to decide now.  It’s shit or get off the pot.  I’m happy with this future for the Vita, so I’m shitting in this metaphor (?).  If you aren’t, go sell it now before it loses too much value.  Well, play Gravity Rush next week and then go sell it.

Also, as a closing note, I think we – the fans of the Vita – need to keep putting pressure on Sony.  Yoshida is quite active on twitter so I’ve been making it perfectly clear to him that I didn’t think the conference was acceptable for Vita coverage.  I also plan on using this site (for the little traffic it generates) to do the same.  Because even though I’m comfortable with where Sony’s failure is headed… it doesn’t mean that we should let them off the hook for dropping the ball.  Because the Vita *IS* capable of being so much more and Sony fucked it up, at least in the short-term.

For Your Vita Hype E3 Live Blog

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8:30pm Eastern (show starts at 9pm)

Hey guys.  Im just getting setup now.  I have multiple windows open.  Im playing my moves in Pure Chess.  I’m being a snarky dick on twitter.  It’s good stuff.

I’m going to try to update this thread several times through the conference.  If you are following the twitter stream it will be mostly repeat info.

Here’s some last minute predictions (that aren’t coming from rumors I’ve heard… just actual real predictions)

Sony pretends the Vita is selling well.

Killzone is announced but either isn’t dated or is dated 2013.

Some PSN game they show quickly looks cool as heck.

We feel moderately better about Sony after the conference is over.

They show more Vita games than Microsoft did 360 games (number to beat: 6 –  haha).

More to come.

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8:41

Sound Shapes being shown on stream at the sony blog.  $15 for the ps3 and vita versions.  Can’t see anything on the screen.

Dated: Aug 7th

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8:45

Everyone is excited to see The Last of Us.  Shocking stuff.  This is why you need this live blog.

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8:51

Still “pre-show” but they are showing Sly 4 on the ps3.  I’m not thrilled that the majority of the Vita stuff we’re gonna see is going to be on both platforms, but this is definitely a game that i definitely would prefer to have on the Vita.

Looks awesome

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9pm

Waiting for the show to start.  Waiting… waiting…  hmm, ok, one more move in Pure Chess…

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9:04

Started with a montage.  Can’t believe it!
Here comes Tretton.

Cage coming on stage.  Quantic Dream’s newest is up first.

Game called BEYOND.  Greg Miller just pooped himself.

Actress playing lead role is Ellen Page.

Looks like supernatural Heavy Rain with better performances.  Amazing stuff.

Date not given

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9:21

Playstation Allstars Battle Royale is up.

Looks fun but not really my thing.  Vita person won the fight though.

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PSN+ has lots of free stuff, nothing mentioned for vita.

PSone games coming to vita this summer (its going to be august)

Assassin’s Creed Vita shown off very quickly.

Going to be a pack in sold.  October 30th.  Has 4gb memory card.
Showing off Ass Creed 3 now…

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9:45

Ubisoft showing off PS3 games.
Ass Creed stuff on boats – looks amazing.

Far Cry 3 has 4 player co-op.  Looks awesome.

When did ubisoft get so good?

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9:52

Sony doing move stuff.  Showing off a book peripheral aimed at kids.  Good time for a snack.

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Wonder book works with a Harry Potter something or other.  Will sell millions.  Not to me though.  Sorry, I can’t get any hype going.  I don’t mean to be dismissive if you’re excited.

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Finally, now they are talking about the playstation suite.  Not once do they mention the vita.   WHAT. THE. FUCK. SONY!

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God of war up now.  Looks like god of war.  Feels like the air has been let out of this conference.
This demo of the game just won’t end….

Dated: March 12, 2013

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Last of Us is up now.  Looks incredible.

But… the Vita feels like a no show at this thing.

Last of us demo is full gameplay.  Is jaw-dropping,

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Conference over.  Sony doesn’t seem to notice that it has a new handheld.

 

 

Gonna write up an editorial-ish recap after I take the shotgun out of my mouth.