PSVita Is the Vita dead? KindaFunnyGames discusses!

[DoomDash]

First few minutes are a bit off topic, but I thought it was a good debate. I agree with Collin and Greg of course, and as a 3DS owner I felt the same about the 3DS library as them.

 

[agentyork]

oh wow, greg's first con is icon, so funny, it was my first too since i went to stony brook and went there my first year.

they can't be any more wrong about them loving the vita more than everyone. i'm part of everyone and i love the vita more than they can imagine.

as for near, they are severely wrong too. i enjoy using near, i use it at any plaza, mall, local areas and scope out psn accounts and make friends! i have made several friends using near and its not an experience i want deleted, it really is something everyone should check out and try.

never used maps, but i do own the 3g model but i have verizon so i never bothered with the 3g service.

i love the youtube app, it really compliments the ps vita's ability to multitask. how cool is it to be in the middle of a game, tab out of it and go on youtube and watch something related to the game? or like you are stuck on this puzzle and you want to distract your mind to give yourself a fresh perspective, so you tab out since you don't want to lose that save and you go on youtube, watch something funny and com back to it. i will miss this feature a lot.

 

[Lord Phelan]

Never liked Greg or Colin, they had some great guys visiting them in 3rd chair... but their opinions... well I don't care about them, they are living inside they perfect dream bubble

This thing about "if they didn't care about it, they wouldn't even notify people" is some kind of moronic thing to say. It's not like youtube app would just start working bad... with youtube changing to DATA API v3 it would just stop working. Not for 1 or 10 guys, it would stop working for 11 millions of Vita owners at exactly the same day - 20 April 2015.

Not only that would create huge shitstorm many many times stronger than we see now, but also tech support guys would be spammed all over with questions about what the fuck is going on. So yeah, they had to say this beforehand. And yes it is possible to update software so that it will be able to handle DATA API V3. You still will be able to use youtube... but through browser... and only a person who didn't use that browser would advise people to use it.

Releasing ports and indies isn't sign of support.

And no it's not matter of affection, it is simple matter that 3DS has more of good games. This pains me like a hell as Vita owner, because I do prefer Vita, and I do think that it is much better device. It has biggest potential! And not used, that potential is not even used in 10%.

Severed is not an exclusive, gosh... that's why I never liked IGN "journalists" they never check facts before talking. It was first announced on iOS, few month earlier than Vita version.

And than talk about support from Studio Japan... yeah... it would be great if anyone would care to patch Freedom Wars, they released great game... and left it. I dunno how it is doing in Japan, but West version isn't even supported. It doesn't even have 1/10 of events that DoS have. The ranking is still messed up, making PvP absolutely worthless. So do they really give support to Vita? Oreshika another game... it was announced ages ago... released ages ago in JP.... and we are waiting since then... not even knowing about the game. It was on PAX me thinks.... no coverage... but from what I heard it was kinda broken (I mean that particular version not game).

And than again with PS4 doing shitty in Japan, they will make all their first party studios to produce more PS4 games. That's kinda stupid situation, they are not willing to support Vita in West because it isn't doing as good as PS4... in Japan they are shifting their studios to focus on PS4... because Vita is doing much better there and they want to force people to buy PS4.

Though I agree about the point about Steam Machine

Danganronpa 2 isn't Vita exclusive, a PlayStation exclusive? yes. Vita exclusive? no. It is PSP port... (though I still need to get it, and I know that I will love it)

Velocity? Rogue Legacy? Frozen Synapse... none of this make my heart beat faster... those game could even not exist, and I wouldn't be bothered by it one damn bit.

Though it was interesting to listen to Tim Gettys....

 

[LiquidEvilGaming]

I'd kind of have to lean on the side of the Vita isn't "dead" per say but it is what it is and it won't improve as time goes on. It's a VERY niche device which has been relegated to mostly inferior ports and indies as of this point with the occasional unique release. While it's a decent device to compliment your 3DS i could never in my right mind recommend a Vita over a 3DS at this point.

 

[Shoobs]

I'd kind of have to lean on the side of the Vita isn't "dead" per say but it is what it is and it won't improve as time goes on. It's a VERY niche device which has been relegated to mostly inferior ports and indies as of this point with the occasional unique release. While it's a decent device to compliment your 3DS i could never in my right mind recommend a Vita over a 3DS at this point.

I would recommend Vita over 3DS and do, often. You can only play so much Mario and Zelda before it is overload.
Vita is aimed at adult gamers and perfect for a Daddy with bugger all spare time who rarely gets the telly.
Vita has been relegated to an indie/jrpg device and I'm fine with that. I'm hoping that Sony can actually continue that and even capitalise on it. Make the Vita the place Indie developers want their games.
We need more Drink box studios!!

 

[agentyork]

I would recommend Vita over 3DS and do, often. You can only play so much Mario and Zelda before it is overload.
Vita is aimed at adult gamers and perfect for a Daddy with bugger all spare time who rarely gets the telly.
Vita has been relegated to an indie/jrpg device and I'm fine with that. I'm hoping that Sony can actually continue that and even capitalise on it. Make the Vita the place Indie developers want their games.
We need more Drink box studios!!

the vita is not aimed towards adults nor is the 3ds just about mario and zelda. such generalizations really prevent people from trying/enjoying all the various consoles.
the 3ds provides such a wide spread experience for casuals and gamers alike. for me and many alike the 3ds pushes out several must have titles every year. the vita pushes out a lot of content that i either think is alright or can wait for later. the vita doesn't provide that must have library of games, it does however satisfies niche genre/gameplay boundlessly.

 

[Shoobs]

the vita is not aimed towards adults nor is the 3ds just about mario and zelda. such generalizations really prevent people from trying/enjoying all the various consoles.
the 3ds provides such a wide spread experience for casuals and gamers alike. for me and many alike the 3ds pushes out several must have titles every year. the vita pushes out a lot of content that i either think is alright or can wait for later. the vita doesn't provide that must have library of games, it does however satisfies niche genre/gameplay boundlessly.

I wouldn't say Vita is aimed at kids though. The Vita isn't fragile but it's not built to take the pounding most kids would give it. 3DS is aimed at kids and has a bucket load more kid friendly games and apps than Vita.
I know that 3DS is more than just Mario and such but that's my opinion of the thing. It may be a generalisation but it's still my opinion.
I've tried DS and 3DS, I don't think much of them, feel too cheap and too "kiddy" for me. And I used to love my gameboy.
I friggen love my Vita and have since I first switched it on.
Do I care if it doesn't have the exclusives/must haves? No, not really, it never has

 

[agentyork]

I wouldn't say Vita is aimed at kids though. The Vita isn't fragile but it's not built to take the pounding most kids would give it. 3DS is aimed at kids and has a bucket load more kid friendly games and apps than Vita.
I know that 3DS is more than just Mario and such but that's my opinion of the thing. It may be a generalisation but it's still my opinion.
I've tried DS and 3DS, I don't think much of them, feel too cheap and too "kiddy" for me. And I used to love my gameboy.
I friggen love my Vita and have since I first switched it on.
Do I care if it doesn't have the exclusives/must haves? No, not really, it never has

my main focus is that nintendo is not focused nor aimed towards kids. their games are kid friendly but not aimed towards them. its aimed at gamers as a whole, who want to experience what nintendo has to offer. their games being kid friendly does not make their games childish nor any less adult than a bloody graphical game. not kid friendly does not equal adult games.

 

[Shoobs]

my main focus is that nintendo is not focused nor aimed towards kids. their games are kid friendly but not aimed towards them. its aimed at gamers as a whole, who want to experience what nintendo has to offer. their games being kid friendly does not make their games childish nor any less adult than a bloody graphical game. not kid friendly does not equal adult games.

No need to nit pick the details mate.
Call it what you will. Family games, kiddy games, kid friendly games, whatever.
Vita has it's share of kid friendly games too but I just see it as aimed more at the adult market.

Anyhoo, back on topic. The Vita that Sony imagined and advertised back at E3 some 3years ago(?) is dead. The console quality games on the go proved to be a foolish idea that not even Sony could afford to support.
But, the Vita isn't dead. Like some freakish undead stumbling corpse, it refuses to die and has come back from the dead, and been re-imagined, more times than I can count.
Console quality portable games machine, Indie powerhouse, PS4 controller, niche JRPG haven. Whatever happens next it will just keep trudging along. Whether Sony supports it or not.

 

[Yanikun]

I have bad news for the woman who says that the Vita is doing really well in Japan and thinks it will continue to do really well. The Vita collapsed almost six months ago, its last "big" game was a commercial failure and I don't think Sony has announced a single game for it. There are no games in its upcoming line up that aren't targeted squarely at the existing user base. To keep numbers up it would need games that are in different genres to expand the audience.

Over there as well it's crystal clear Sony sacrificed the Vita to make the PS4 as successful as possible, and it has never done really well. The only way you could think it was doing really well is if you thought the Wii U and PS4 were pulling in good numbers and saw the Vita was doing better, but the Wii U and PS4 were selling abysmally and the Vita at its peak had the sales of a system approaching the end of its lifespan. It's highly likely the PS4 will end up selling more hardware and software than the Vita, and Sony obviously thinks that way too.

Colin Moriarty's argument about the 3DS' library is also weird. He says there's nothing between the tentpole releases whereas the Vita gets a game every week, and the latter is true, but so does the 3DS. He seems to pay considerably more attention to the Vita's indie offerings than the 3DS'. If he has nothing to play between the big releases but he's going to praise the Vita's indie games, I don't get it. The 3DS has some incredible indie games, many of which are exclusive or were at one point exclusive. He's being extremely biased by making it sound like the only games that count on the 3DS are the big Nintendo games (though, by saying "Mario Golf, then what else?", he leaves off Kirby Triple Deluxe, Tomodachi Life, Smash Bros. and Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire...) while completely dismissing all the developers releasing games every week. The last four games I bought on the 3DS (three of them being new releases) weren't made by Nintendo and they were a blast. Also, to Colin and Greg, the game's called Codename S.T.E.A.M., not Project S.T.E.A.M., which again kinda shows they don't care that much, but at least Greg admits he doesn't know enough about the 3DS and that's why he doesn't enter that debate.

As for the question in the title of the video, which they never actually focus on, it all depends on your definition of "death" in the gaming industry. It's basically done selling in North America and PAL regions and is down heavily in Japan. There are people buying games, enabling the publishers to make a profit, but there's never a lot of people, which indicates that the active Vita user base is very small. It's alive as a platform in the sense that you can bring a game on it with the right expectations and make money, but there's no interest from Sony to diversify the line up or to continue in the portable hardware market beyond the Vita. To me it's basically like the PS3 or Xbox 360 in their current state in the way that it gets game announcements because the publishers who make them know there's an audience already on the system for their game to get some decent numbers, but there's no attempt to expand that audience or to make something that will sell really really well, because they know it's as far as it will go. It will take years for it to sell 0 units and have 0 games releasing on it, but I'd say that's the video game definition of life support.

 

[Lord Phelan]

I have bad news for the woman who says that the Vita is doing really well in Japan and thinks it will continue to do really well. The Vita collapsed almost six months ago, its last "big" game was a commercial failure and I don't think Sony has announced a single game for it. There are no games in its upcoming line up that aren't targeted squarely at the existing user base. To keep numbers up it would need games that are in different genres to expand the audience.

I don't think that it "collapsed", yes Oreshika didn't sell as well as they would want... but Freedom Wars sold quite nicely. And look at Vita sales rate from last half of year.

-14,991 <- 28 th January
-16,823
-56,700
-42,405
-68,041
-15,971
-27,935
-10,236
-19,301
-9,874
-10,688
-12,230
-8,761
-8,561
-27,935
-10,236
-19,301
-9,874
-10,688
-12,230
-29,341
-70,050
-13,510
-15,739
-11,148
-12,331
-14,441
-19,578
-38,907
-18,438
-15,309
-20,825
-17,084
-17,179
-21,875
-27,352 <- data from 9th July

Most of times it sold bettter than PS4 (with 2-3 exceptions)... and that's a problem for Sony. There are no games in pipe line because Vita is doing too well comparing to PS4, not because it collapsed. Like I said it is werid situation in which West refuse to make games because it didn't sell enough... and East refuse to make games because it is selling too well despite the fact that it is already 4 years old.

 

[Yanikun]

yes Oreshika didn't sell as well as they would want

I was talking about Phantasy Star Nova. The game sold below even Sega's revised expectations. They originally expected to reach 500k and I don't think it's reached 200k even including digital sales estimates from Famitsu.

The Vita was at its peak in the first few months of 2014, it's ever since about September or October I believe that its sales truly dropped. It was originally way up on last year, then ended the year down year over year.

 

[Lord Phelan]

I was talking about Phantasy Star Nova. The game sold below even Sega's revised expectations. They originally expected to reach 500k and I don't think it's reached 200k even including digital sales estimates from Famitsu.

The Vita was at its peak in the first few months of 2014, it's ever since about September or October I believe that its sales truly dropped. It was originally way up on last year, then ended the year down year over year.

Ahh I thought that you were talking about 1st party games.

PSN probably did reach 200k (with digital sales combined). Some data from retail sale:
First week -> 107,313
Second Week -> 19,833
Third week -> 10,117

So yeah, probably it did reach 200k, but 500k is totally out of reach. Btw. where did you read about their goal?

Well but than... take a look at how PS4 is doing... even the biggest games are selling below any expectation:
GTA V- 81,659
Fifa - 16,719
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare -> 64,060 (on PS3 79,586)
Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 -> 26,684 (on PS3 71,303)
The Evil Within -> 59,204 (on PS3 59,388)

but that's nothing compared to typical Japanese games like
Omega Quintet ->9,365

Vita is still best selling device from PlayStation.... though it can't compare to 3DS which gets games which sell in millions of copies in just just first week.

EDIT: the biggest test for Japanese Market will be March, if nothing will change than some major changes may happen.

 

[DuhWhitePanda]

I agree with the overall video.

-Vita isnt dead, it gets weekly ports. However, Sony doesn't want to support it.
- Vita won't go up from here, it'll only go down.
- 3DS has the better line up. Sorry, its a fact. Unless you're some casual scrub, 95% of Vita's line up can be found else where, and its superior.

 

[TeknoBlast]

Oh god, I wont even want to watch this video since Greg Miller is in it. Just cant stand that guy, but interested in the content of the video. Thanks Greg Miller for ruining this video.

 

[LiquidEvilGaming]

I would recommend Vita over 3DS and do, often. You can only play so much Mario and Zelda before it is overload.
Vita is aimed at adult gamers and perfect for a Daddy with bugger all spare time who rarely gets the telly.
Vita has been relegated to an indie/jrpg device and I'm fine with that. I'm hoping that Sony can actually continue that and even capitalise on it. Make the Vita the place Indie developers want their games.
We need more Drink box studios!!

Mario and Zelda and Pokemon and great for sure! But to be honest most of the games i play on 3DS are not those.

Bravely default - Beat JRPG turn based in ages
Persona Q (Not just a port unlike golden)
Resident evil revelations so good it got ported to consoles
Etrian Odyssey (Several)
NES Remix
Shifting world
Fantasy Life
Shovel Knight
Scribblenauts
Shin Megami Tensei IV
KingDom hearts 3D dream drop
Shin megami tensei devil survivor
Monster hunter
Fire Emblem awakening
Tales of the Abyss
Kid Icarus
Phoenix Wright
Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward
Theatrhythm Final Fantasy
Super Smash bros


I could go on and on and on but these are just some of my favorites outside the typical Mario/Zelda games.

I'd argue fairly easily IMO 3DS has a superior RPG library especially since most of it's are not ports or slight enhancements. The only genre Vita really excels in IS indies but quite frankly my Windows tablet with a 360 controller and Steam Blows either out of the water for those


Either way it's not all Mario/Zelda games Nor are those by any real gamer relegated to "kid games" just because they don't involve massive gore or sexual themes.

 

[Shoobs]

Mario and Zelda and Pokemon and great for sure! But to be honest most of the games i play on 3DS are not those.

Bravely default - Beat JRPG turn based in ages
Persona Q (Not just a port unlike golden)
Resident evil revelations so good it got ported to consoles
Etrian Odyssey (Several)
NES Remix
Shifting world
Fantasy Life
Shovel Knight
Scribblenauts
Shin Megami Tensei IV
KingDom hearts 3D dream drop
Shin megami tensei devil survivor
Monster hunter
Fire Emblem awakening
Tales of the Abyss
Kid Icarus
Phoenix Wright
Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward
Theatrhythm Final Fantasy
Super Smash bros


I could go on and on and on but these are just some of my favorites outside the typical Mario/Zelda games.

I'd argue fairly easily IMO 3DS has a superior RPG library especially since most of it's are not ports or slight enhancements. The only genre Vita really excels in IS indies but quite frankly my Windows tablet with a 360 controller and Steam Blows either out of the water for those


Either way it's not all Mario/Zelda games Nor are those by any real gamer relegated to "kid games" just because they don't involve massive gore or sexual themes.

Yet you still mention Smash Bros (a Mario game) in your list of 3DS games
Not trying to nit pick but LOL
Like I said earlier, I've had my fill of Mario and friends and I prefer my Vita.
.... Even though I do get in a bit of Super Mario with the kids occasionally

 

[LiquidEvilGaming]

Yet you still mention Smash Bros (a Mario game) in your list of 3DS games
Not trying to nit pick but LOL
Like I said earlier, I've had my fill of Mario and friends and I prefer my Vita.
.... Even though I do get in a bit of Super Mario with the kids occasionally

Fair enough but i'll say this having owned both. Excluding every Mario/Zelda/Metroid game i still had WAY more games of interest on 3DS than i ever did Vita. Not to say i disliked my Vita just that the library was far smaller (especially so if you are not into Ports/Indies).

The device had such insane potential it literally angers me (pathetic over a handheld i know)...to see it in it's current state makes me weep. Oh Sony what the Vita could have been..


P.S Smash bros hardly qualifies as a "mario game" Most of the characters are from other game universes and it's a competitive fighter played at several tournaments.

 

[Lord Phelan]

The device had such insane potential it literally angers me (pathetic over a handheld i know)...to see it in it's current state makes me weep. Oh Sony what the Vita could have been..

I don't really think that it is pathetic (I would admit that I am pathethic - > and I don't feel like this )

Sure it is just handheld... a toy for big kids

But you know what... I still had to work and earn some money to afford Vita and memory card. I'm not really complaining on how much I earn, and I don't think of myself as someone who is poor or anything... but still... I have deep "respect" for that money I earned. When you live in country where average wages are nowhere near to those in USA or UK you learn to respect the value of money. With Vita... I love it! but sometimes... when I look at 3DS lineup I just feel that I could have spent that money bit wiser.

And just to explain, take a look at this:
http://www.gamepointsnow.com/blog/how-many-hours-do-you-have-to-work-to-buy-the-latest-game/

and check how much you need to work to afford games in various countries

 

[LiquidEvilGaming]

I always forget at times when people here in the US flipping burgers for a living are trying to demand 15$ an hour....meanwhile other countries they can barely afford to keep alive let alone game. Kind of puts a realistic spin on things.