Sony: PlayStation Vita will win gamers back from tablets, phones
Exec in lauding own product SHOCK
Sony has hit back at analysts who say its PlayStation Vita will struggle in the face of smartphone and tablet gaming, insisting punters will in fact discard those rival products for the Sony handheld. Shocker!
Sony marketing man John Koller, in an interview with Gamespot, dismissed those analysts' claims, saying the company has done a lot of research into the matter and concludes there are mobile phone gamers really want what the Vita has to offer.
Taking smartphone gaming from behind?
Last week, it was suggested that the Vita is heading for a rough ride at launch, due to the console's high price point, and the leaps and bounds the mobile games industry has made recently.
“When you look at the type of consumer that's playing cell phone games currently, it's someone that enjoys smaller 'kill time' gaming and has not gravitated to the larger, richer, deeper experiences that true handheld gaming provides," said Koller.
“You're going to see PS Vita expand what a lot of people believe to be true about handheld gaming, and you're going to see a lot of those current mobile phone and tablet gamers come over to Vita. We're very convinced of that.”
Well, you'd have to be wouldn't you? Sony's PlayStation Vita is out early next year. ®
COMMENTS
Personally...
I hate all in one devices. The worst of all worlds.
I have a Android smartphone. I also have a Honeycomb Asus Transformer Tablet, I have a Sony Walkman A-Series and I also have a PSP GO.
They are all top of their game in what they do, there is certainly overlap, and somtimes I will listen to music on my phone for example, but I prefer to have the best, rather than compromise on a all-in-one.
I also don't see how 99p smartphone/tablet games are in any way related to proper PS Vita games, which are clearly a "proper games". So i'm with Sony on this one, they are different markets. I think these analysts for hire are the crazies here, that don't know thier arse from their elbow and will say whatever the highest bidder wants them to say...
Huh?
Phone games might be shite, well ok they are shite, but I don't see why this will be a success when the rest of the PSP line wasn't. As for a deeper gaming experience, I don't see how someone can say that and PSP in the same breath with a straight face. All PSP games have ever been is cut down versions of proper games. Fifa and Ace Combat were ok, but everything I tried was a disappointment. There was no elegance in the controls, everything was too frantic to enjoy and the depth of most games was ripped out of them.
The PSP was the best portable video player you could own when it first came out, but the world moved on with large screen Andriods or even iPods and iPhones - and they definitely accumulate less fingerprints, scratches and are getting larger with every generation of device.
It's not just
"the more adventurous games". I haven't played a decent game of Tetris since everything went touchscreen.
PSP
Hopefully Sony will have learnt their lesson from the PSP, the homebrew scene for the PSP was massive, if Sony taps into that and produces an SDK to allow "99p apps" to appear on the Vita then they get the best of both worlds, AAA titles and throw away games.
Personally, I can't wait for the Vita, one of the best games on any system was on the PSP (Harvest Moon: Life - what? It was amazingly gentle gameplay!). The price point isn't high either, it's bloody cheap, a portable PS3 for £200? People spend over twice that on a tablet!
I agree with him
Actually I think he's right. The problem all these supposedly awesome tablets and smartphones have is the lack of a decent control system -a touch screen might be fine for flinging birds, but it's no good for much else. Tried playing Dead Space on an Iphone? It's shite, mainly because your fingers have to cover the screen, which kind of makes it difficult to see what you're doing. I also find the games tend to be less stable, certainly from my experience of Iphone gaming, the number of crashes makes some games unplayable.
The real test will be whether anyone actually makes some decent games for it. If they were to get franchises like Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Bioshock, Mass Effect and maybe a full featured Gran Turismo (although I wouldn't expect that to arrive anytime before the colonisation of Mars in a few hundred years) I could see it being a success. Portable Elder Scrolls on a system poweful enough to run it equivalent to Oblivion on a home system would be like video game crack. You can keep your Angry Birds, thanks. I prefer proper games.
