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Is it Better to Burn Bright Than to Fade Away? Four years. Four years since Play. Station Vita made its bow in the west and still, despite many naysayers sentencing the handheld to an early grave, Sony’s portable continues to truck along under the shadow of its console brethren. In hindsight, it’s been a funny old road for the PS Vita, which debuted in 2. Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Super Stardust Delta and much more. As time worn on, though, Sony’s strategy altered to reflect the relatively lowly sales figures, quietly nudging the device toward becoming the cult device of the modern Play.
Station ecosystem. By 2. 01. 4, the Play. Station Vita was aligned as a less of a standalone hardware and more of a supplementary experience to the Play. Station 4, all thanks to the Remote Play functionality.
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Sony steps in to bring The Banner Saga to. All Systems Operational Check out our status. The game will eventually come out for the PlayStation Vita. Sony Helping Out With PlayStation Vita Port of The Banner.
The Platform That Could. Truth be told, it’s a feature that should have been championed from the get- go, and while the list of compatible PS3 games left much to be desired at the time, it was an enticing addition to what was — and largely still is — a technological powerhouse. Marketing missteps and missed opportunities are arguably the key reasons why the console is now viewed as a “legacy platform” going into 2. Couple this with proprietary memory cards and their exorbitant prices and Sony has in many ways painted itself into a corner.
Port Forwarding and DMZ to help multiplayer. There are 2 stages to the process of setting up your PS Vita for port forwarding or as. More Sony Communities: Sony. Consoles & Peripherals. PS Vita Games;. PlayStation®App; Docs for PlayStation® Sony Rewards; NEWS NEWS. New Games Releases; Blog; My Trophies; My.
The Banner Saga, to complete its PlayStation Vita port of. Sony Guarantees Banner Saga on PS Vita. Is It Better to Burn Bright Than to Fade Away? Trying to map out PlayStation Vita. Sony has announced plans to help port The Banner Saga to the PlayStation Vita. PlayStation Vita Sony the banner saga The Banner. Play a wide range of PlayStation 4 games on the PlayStation Vita system. Sony's PlayStation Vita. I seem to get a few more hours out of my LCD Vita when. Get The Banner Saga. Strategy game for PS Vita console from the official. Carefully choose those who will help fight a new threat that jeopardizes an.
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It may be one of the most passionate corners in the industry, as Vita’s impressive attachment rate attests, but the shoestring list of AAA blockbusters — ever the thorn in the device’s side — ultimately clipped its chances of replicating the barnstorming success of the PSP, let alone Nintendo 3. DS. Sony Bend’s Uncharted: Golden Abyss, still one of the best experiences tailored to the platform, came and went, as did the rather excellent Killzone: Mercenary along with Japan Studio’s monstrous RPG, Freedom Wars. Then again, there’s a whole host of factors that heaped pressure on Vita from the get- go beyond its sparse roster of blockbusters, with mobile gaming arguably the most damaging. Plus, anyone who owns a Vita — myself included — will know fine well that claiming the handheld has no games is little more than an urban myth at this point. We’re big advocates of Sony’s portable gaming machine here at Play. Station Life. Style, having recently championed Drink.
Box’s Severed as our most anticipated game releasing for the platform in 2. But even the more zealous owners among our tight- knit band of devotees realize that the Vita’s presence only continues to wane — if not in the market then certainly in Sony’s ecosystem.
Not Dead. It’s something we’re beginning to see on both sides of the pixels, too; by aligning internal resources with the flagship PS4, numerous and indeed nascent games for the platform were reportedly scrapped early on in development. From a potential Golden Abyss sequel by way of Sony Bend to the elusive portable version of in. Famous, the Vita’s formative years could have been oh so different. Perhaps the most notable absentee from the handheld’s early foray in the market, though, was a certain sandbox phenomenon. It’s no secret that Sony missed the boat by not securing Minecraft Vita as a day- one launch title.
Hindsight is 2. 0- 2. Mojang’s title didn’t grace the handheld for more than two years after it launched — at a time when the Vita’s battle with 3. DS for the market lion’s share was all but over and the device was fast becoming a legacy platform under the shadow of PS4 — reads like a missed opportunity. Too little, too late. It was by no means the only offender, though; soon after Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified and Resistance: Burning Skies, third- party support began to peter out rather fast, leading Sony to double down on sustaining the healthy indie community that’s lent the Vita its cult status.
Few in Number. That’s not to say the handheld’s lineup was completely devoid of high- profile releases in the years that followed; from the aforementioned Killzone: Mercenary to Soul Sacrifice and even Japan Studio’s Freedom Wars, Vita owners had access to a string of notable titles that put the console through its pace, even if they were few and far between. Looking further afield and 2. World of Final Fantasy, Danganronpa V3, Cosmic Star Heroine, Mighty No. Hyper Light Drifter et al. All is not lost, however.
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Gio Corsi, ever the champion of Sony’s powerful little companion, revealed recently that, before production begins in earnest, a lot of studios are presented with the opportunity of developing a Vita port.“. I’m not gonna deny that, we all know that’s true! When we do a project, we always say, .
People really love that platform – it’s the platform that could.”Exactly how successful those talks prove to be will largely be told in time, though considering that both Gravity Rush and Tearaway journeyed in the opposite direction, we but can’t help but wonder if Vita developers are asked whether they’re open to releasing a PS4 version as well. Trying to map out Play. Station Vita’s immediate future therefore becomes really rather difficult.
Simply decreeing that the handheld is dead in the water reads like a sweeping generalization. Yes, the fact that ports for Hand of Fate, Broforce and, more recently, Not a Hero were all canned gives an indication of the effort it requires to develop said port, and what happens when projected sales figures ostensibly render a Vita version redundant. Even still, it wasn’t too long ago that Mike Bithell’s Volume made the jump to Vita — greeted with impressive sales, no less — while a handheld version of Axiom Verge is still, at the time of writing, languishing in development. That added effort has been seen on both sides, too, with Sony actively stepping in to help shepherd The Banner Saga to the device before the turn of the year.
Small steps, sure, but the sales boon for Volume emphasises just how vocal the Vita community can be. Sony hasn’t disclosed individual platform sales in its fiscal reports since 2. Vita’s lifetime sales with absolute certainty, but reports indicate that said figure is simmering north of 1. That’s a far cry from the 8. PSP, but it’s worth remembering that the Nintendo DS was by and large its sole competitor at the time, not the App Store.
The Song Remains the Same. For Play. Station Vita, Sony hasn’t cut ties with its beloved handheld just yet. Third- party AAA support may be dwindling, but perhaps out of necessity the device has become more of a thriving hotspot for indie darlings, quirky Japanese titles and tactile platformers, and less a platform that boasts console gaming on the go. It’s been a funny old road for Sony’s handheld, though signs point to the Play. Station Vita motoring on for the foreseeable future, even if the Japanese platform holder’s attention, marketing and stage time will soon be occupied by Play.
Station VR. The install base may have plateaued, but so long as the two- fold relationship between developers supporting the device and consumers picking up those ports — not matter how long they take to arrive — Vita will continue to exist as “the platform that could.” Let’s just hope we’ll be saying the same when its 5th birthday rolls around.
Play. Station Vita may die childless, but it changed Sony in time for the PS4. Shahid Ahmad nearly passed out in the middle of one of the most important conversations of his professional life. Ahmad, the director of strategic content at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, was approaching his 1.
Play. Station. The Play. Station 3 was winding down, and its successor was years away from being unveiled. Sony's second handheld, the Play.
Station Vita, was due to launch late that year in Japan and early the following year in the Americas and Europe. Its first handheld, the PSP, was a moderate seller at a time when its direct, dual- screened competition at Nintendo was finding enormous sales success. It needed something new, and Ahmad was part of the plan to deliver that. It would have to begin as an act of, if not desperation, then one born of a company that had seen better days. And if it worked, there was the possibility of an even bolder plan. And that secret new plan was his idea.
Today, Ahmad was on the phone because he'd recently switched roles inside of SCEE. His new job was all about convincing developers to create or bring their existing games to Sony's platforms using the nascent Play.
Station Mobile proposal. His job was to convince game makers to join a program that would allow them to create games using a Play.
Station framework. Gamers could then play the games they made (or ported) on certain Android phones and Play. Station Vita. Sony was trailing its competitors at Microsoft and Nintendo. And it had been for years. Instead, Sony overshot with the Play. Station 3's high initial price and its newfangled and complex Cell processor hardware. As a result, Sony — which had once been a disrupting titan — had spent the previous few years catching up with competition that had beaten it to market and at the cash register.
In late 2. 01. 1, his role was to convince developers that Sony and Play. Station were good investments worthy of the time and effort it would take to bring their games to these new platforms. If an indie developer can be a rock star, Ismail is one of the most famous front men. He is public, outspoken and well- known. And if Vlambeer agreed to port its popular games, Ahmad thought that could create valuable momentum in the budding Play. Station Mobile platform.
He had what he calls a . Because at this point, I started to feel like I was going to black out. He remembers the office refrigerator. He remembers an empty Coke that he doesn't remember drinking. And he remembers that Ismail didn't say anything out of the ordinary, which he thinks means that the attack went unnoticed.
A phone call that could have resulted in disaster instead ended in . Vlambeer's Super Crate Box appeared as one of about 3. Play. Station Mobile launched roughly six months later. It was never an overwhelming sales success, nor was it burdened with a long list of exclusive games. But it has survived with a fairly steady stream of releases to keep the handheld viable as a platform. It even gained a bit of new life with the release of the Play.
Station 4 in late 2. But its future — and even the future of handheld gaming at Sony — is less than assured. Blame Android and i. OS. Then, a few days ago, a Play.
Station executive said that Sony's first- party studios have . Together, they paint a dreary picture for the handheld. At least right now, Sony's game makers have abandoned the Play. Station Vita. The handheld could be entering the final phases of its life without any viable offspring, as the company concentrates on its hit hardware, the PS4. The handheld has been beleaguered from the start, and it never quite managed to establish itself as a platform for launching new, exclusive games. But in the years since the PS Vita's release, whatever success that Sony can brag about owes a lot to one man's ideas.
And those ideas do not stop at the PS Vita. Sony needed games, which meant it needed developers. And he had a plan to get them. He just had to convince his bosses at Sony to let him do something kind of weird first. He set out to make games. He published his first for the Atari 4.
The young programmer made a cassette tape and advertised in magazines. He sold zero copies. It doesn't matter how hard you worked or how good it is if it disappears into the atmosphere.
He worked as a developer for more than a decade, then moved into the publishing side at Virgin Publishing and Hasbro Interactive, where he helped reboot the Atari brand in the early 2. These were the days before the independent developer revolution, when the walled gardens of consoles were much higher than they are today. Start would live in the middle, helping games get where their creators wanted them to go. When successful, Start receive some portion of the game's revenue.
And the answer was consoles and Sony. He joined the company's developer relations division at just about the time that Sony and Play. Station's fortunes were shifting. They were wrong. Its core was built around the Cell microprocessor. It was powerful and cutting edge, and Sony believed its benefits were self- evident.
And not just in video game consoles. Its extensibility, Sony's thinking went, extended to common household appliances like refrigerators and even televisions. But before all that, there was the Play. Station 3, powered by the powerful new Cell technology. That coupled with the rise in popularity of Microsoft's Xbox 3. PS3, many developers used Microsoft's system as a lead and ported their games to PS3.
Further, many multi- platform developers and publishers didn't see the benefit of spending inordinate amounts of time to make a multiplatform game look spectacular on system and not the other. Once they got comfortable with the PS3 they could make games that looked just as good on both. Sony wasn't failing, exactly, but it couldn't be described as winning, either.
What might once have been described as arrogance born of the PS2's success became something like humility, as Sony recognized that developers didn't flock to the PS3. Instead, Sony had to convince many of them to join. And a sense of contrite humility wasn't going to be enough. At this point, both were relics. In fact, many believed those policies were hurting Sony, though not everyone inside the company agreed. But it was more than that, too. The message was clear: This new device was designed to capture the best of the console and smartphone worlds.
Game makers could create console- like experiences for it, without forcing gamers to use their fingers to smudge their screens and wrestle with imprecise controls. The idea seemed to be, to crib a line from Field of Dreams, that if you built it, they would come.
But not many. It's not that the Vita didn't have games or players. It just didn't have as many as Sony or game makers might have expected, and the . Sony infused its new handheld with technology that made portable gaming popular, surrounded by the solid design that made console gaming popular. But just as the PS3 struggled to win developers, so did the PS Vita. Thanks to Play. Station Mobile, some of those inside of SCEE already proved they could establish relationships with games makers and convince them to spend their time and money on nascent platforms like Play. Station Mobile. And if Ahmad and his team could help with those, the thinking went, maybe they could help with the struggling handheld, too.
At Sony, that meant acknowledging that console makers don't wield the power they once did — and that it had to change to reflect this new reality. Sony could blame the various app stores, the rise of digital distribution services like Steam, the ability for small, independent publishers to forgo consoles entirely if need be. It also needed to acknowledge that its attitude needed to change, too. PC gaming has been alive and well longer than consoles. But PC gaming has always been a bit more hardcore and required more investment. Tracing their way through Atari and the NES, consoles had long been the most mainstream way for most people to play video games. And, after a famously failed relationship with Nintendo, Sony got in on the action.
Enormous success followed. But the rise of services like Steam made PC gaming distribution easier. It streamlined and managed the complexities — and it made getting games on the platform easier for those who made games.
Consoles were more popular than ever, at least in terms of sales figures. But competition made them less powerful, less able to demand strict terms from those who appeared on their platforms and less able to weigh their contracts heavily in favor of publisher rights. It wasn't enough to build the best hardware.
Companies also had to build the best policies to attract developers to their ecosystems. At first, Sony banked on the traditional method of attracting games to the PS Vita, but the games weren't coming, despite Sony's efforts. And what I mean is, in terms of throwing millions and millions and millions of dollars at something, knowing that there's not the market there to recoup that. They are the very content creators who took advantage of the plummeting costs of game development and thrived in app stores.
If he was right, then Sony didn't have to give up on its old partners. But perhaps it could save the PS Vita by acknowledging that there was an opportunity to court new partners. Now he just had to convince Sony to follow it. First was developer Sports Interactive's Football Manager Classic, a version of the long- running sports management simulator. As a harbinger of things to come, Ahmad took to Twitter and asked what players would like to see on Vita. The top answer was Namco's Tales Studio's Tales of Heart R.
It wasn't an indie game or a small company, but it soon came to the system. A couple of unanswered questions remained, though.
Could Sony continue to court developers like these? And would doing so have an impact on the Play. Station Vita? This didn't not catch him unaware. In fact, he prepared for it under an aggressive plan to bring 5.